“Why have you come?” she asked, almost querulous.
“I wanted to,” he replied.
And this she could see from his face. It was fate.
“You are so muddy,” she said, in distaste, but gently.
He looked down at his feet.
“I was walking in the dark,” he replied. But he felt vividly elated. There was a pause. He stood on one side of the tumbled bed, she on the other. He did not even take his cap from his brows.
“And what do you want of me,” she challenged.
He looked aside, and did not answer. Save for the extreme beauty and mystic attractiveness of this distinct, strange face, she would have sent him away. But his face was too wonderful and undiscovered to her. It fascinated her with the fascination of pure beauty, cast a spell on her, like nostalgia, an ache.
“What do you want of me?” she repeated in an estranged voice.
He pulled off his cap, in a movement of dream-liberation, and went across to her. But he could not touch her, because she stood barefoot in her night-dress, and he was muddy and damp. Her eyes, wide and large and wondering, watched him, and asked him the ultimate question.