Again they looked at each other. She suddenly sprang up, turned her back to him, and walked away. He too rose slowly and went to the water’s edge, where, crouching, he began to amuse himself unconsciously. Picking a daisy he dropped it on the pond, so that the stem was a keel, the flower floated like a little water lily, staring with its open face up to the sky. It turned slowly round, in a slow, slow Dervish dance, as it veered away.
He watched it, then dropped another daisy into the water, and after that another, and sat watching them with bright, absolved eyes, crouching near on the bank. Ursula turned to look. A strange feeling possessed her, as if something were taking place. But it was all intangible. And some sort of control was being put on her. She could not know. She could only watch the brilliant little discs of the daisies veering slowly in travel on the dark, lustrous water. The little flotilla was drifting into the light, a company of white specks in the distance.
“Do let us go to the shore, to follow them,” she said, afraid of being any longer imprisoned on the island. And they pushed off in the punt.
She was glad to be on the free land again. She went along the bank towards the sluice. The daisies were scattered broadcast on the pond, tiny radiant things, like an exaltation, points of exaltation here and there. Why did they move her so strongly and mystically?
“Look,” he said, “your boat of purple paper is escorting them, and they are a convoy of rafts.”
Some of the daisies came slowly towards her, hesitating, making a shy bright little cotillion on the dark clear water. Their gay bright candour moved her so much as they came near, that she was almost in tears.
“Why are they so lovely,” she cried. “Why do I think them so lovely?”
“They are nice flowers,” he said, her emotional tones putting a constraint on him.
“You know that a daisy is a company of florets, a concourse, become individual. Don’t the botanists put it highest in the line of development? I believe they do.”
“The compositæ, yes, I think so,” said Ursula, who was never very sure of anything. Things she knew perfectly well, at one moment, seemed to become doubtful the next.