“I don’t care whether she knows or not.”
“Well, then, she shall not know....”
They were silent after this for a long while.
The tide was creeping in now through the maze of mud-banks: when they stopped talking they could hear the water oozing and splashing amongst the reeds. The thin streak of river had widened into a broad lake, and over it the sea-gulls were flapping their wings and crying weirdly. And far in the west where the estuary vanished into the grey hills the sun was sinking in proud splendour. In the near distance lay the village, with its line of cottages facing the sea-wall. Here and there the sun had picked out a window and turned it into a glittering ruby.
Oh, it was all inexpressibly beautiful, this evening picture, with the village and the green meadows and the sun and the rising tide! But Catherine scarcely noticed it. She walked on through the long, stiff grasses, and was thinking only of herself....
§ 4
To begin with, she felt very tired and weary. Of course she had done a good deal that day. She had every reason to be physically tired. But it was not altogether physical tiredness. She felt like a child who has been looking forward to something for a long time, and is disappointed because its expectations are not realized. And again she felt relieved, as one who has been harbouring a vague dread and finds that the worst is not half so bad as was thought. And again she felt sorry, as if both her disappointment and her relief were things to be regretted and to feel ashamed of. And somewhere—vaguely—subconsciously—what was the thought that came to her? A revolutionary thought, a thought that marked an epoch in her life and development. Nothing less than the thought that the things he and she had been discussing, the questions that at one time had seemed the most momentous in her life, were now become by the sad process of time stale, unmeaning, and out of date. Of historic and achæological interest, maybe, but not living things as she had expected them to be living. She had expected to be immensely moved, immensely stirred by this conversation with him. She had expected it so confidently that she had been stirred at the thought of being stirred. She had tuned herself in readiness for a great conflict. And now the conflict had begun, had lasted and was over. She had not been stirred. Not that the blows had been light. It was something in her that gave her a new invulnerability, a strange imperviousness to blows. Her expectations, her dreads, her excitement, her preparations for conflict, all had been for nothing. And now that she realized that they had been for nothing she felt the effect of them—they made her tired, weary, worn out. The tension snapped. Vaguely she felt sorry that she was not suffering more acutely: vaguely she felt that her invulnerability was purchased at a great price. But try as she would she could not help but feel that her conversation with him had been a futile disinterment of dead bones.... She was not hurt. But she was tired—weary—as after a successful and dangerous operation.
They both felt that they had said all that need be said. On the way home scarcely a remark passed between them, except once or twice when he called her attention to the scenery.
He said: “The tide is coming in fast now. It comes in by inches as you watch it.”
She replied: “Yes,” but she did not think what she was saying.