"Back to Bridnorth--to our beds. I love you, my dear, that's why we're going back."
She felt a sudden chill and shivered.
"Back?" she whispered. No other word but that could her mind grasp.
As swiftly then the chill blew by. She felt as though she stood in scorching flames, as if the very heather were alight about her. There was pain and it gave her a fierce power she never thought she had possessed. It brought her anger to think she could suffer so much for such return.
Back? They could not go back! Not now! She had been through it all. This that must happen was just a moment. It was nothing to the hours her mind had lived till then.
She took off her hat and flung it down beside her in the heather.
"It's stifling, this heat," she muttered. "Everything seems burning."
He saw her throw down her hat. He heard what she said. The blood that had been strong like a courageous wine, turned all to water in his veins. He felt his limbs trembling. Something in her was stronger than the greatest purpose he had ever had in his life. It was a purpose he felt might be even stronger than she, yet knew he could not make it so.
It occurred to him, with an ironical laugh in the thought, that she was master of their moments and not he. And yet not she herself. Men were the stronger sex. That was an inherent thought, whatever might be said in abstract argument. Coming to such a moment in life as this, it was the man who must direct. With all the violence of his passions, he could still control.
This, with a loud voice, he told himself in his mind. Yet there was her hat lying in the heather and there in his ears were the sounds of her breathing as she stood beside him. His eyes fell upon her breast that rose and fell as her heart beat beneath it and he knew the current he had breasted with such confidence of power was bearing him back. In all his bodily consciousness then, it was as though his will were failing.