"Yes, it must go through for her sake," he said soberly. "Oh, I'm a queer devil," he continued, hitching his shoulders in some impatience; "I've a brain exactly like one of the monkeys in the Zoo—attracted first by this thing, then by that, just like one of the monkeys in the Zoo. I say, you're coming to-morrow?" he asked, as she rose. "If I'm to finish in time, someone's got to bring me to account."
He stood smiling at her, the sun lighting up his rough locks and causing him to half close his questioning, eager eyes in which there was a touch of anxiety.
She lifted toward him her sensitive and responsive face.
"Will you come?" he insisted. His eyes held hers.
Her brows rose ingenuously, her lips parted, though no word passed them. Then, with a mute gesture of assent, she turned away.
Reaching home, she deemed it expedient to conceal her towering spirits. But even so, it seemed extraordinary that her grandfather did not surprise the thought that informed her cheeks, her eyes and every curve of her body with witchery. In Emil's presence her bearing had not been what she could have wished, but now it was that of a queen.
At bedtime, before her mirror, she arranged her hair after a new fashion. She stared into her bright soft face. Standing in her nightgown she hugged closely to her breast her happiness that was young and young and once again young.
Borne forward in obedience to an irresistible command of nature, she continued to meet St. Ives. In spite of tears and passionate revolts and innumerable petty hypocrisies by which she strove to put another face on her actions, that was awake in her which would not be gainsaid. And, thanks to her sex which so readily can blind itself, her movements for the most part remained superbly instinctive and unconscious.
When she set out of an afternoon for Old Harbour she caught and held every eye, like something bright and sparkling. Nora Gage observed her and malignity appeared to deepen the creases of her fat; while Lizzie Goodenough longed for the temerity to give warning to the motherless slip. All unmindful of them, Rachel, with such bravery of raiment as she could command, pursued her course. And her accoutrement, which was always the same, was by no means inconsiderable. The dress was of yellow barred-muslin and the skirt swayed as she walked like the corolla of a drooping flower. The waist fitted her closely, save at the bosom where there was an over-lapping fulness and in this surplice front was pinned carelessly, surely with the height of art, a cluster of evening primroses. These frail flowers, constantly agitated by the mad beating of her heart, drooped finally, as if in sheer delight at their enviable position. Fastened beneath her chin was the ribbon of her flower-decked hat. This ribbon, passing round that little smooth face and seeming to hold it in a dainty embrace, was a triumph of coquetry: it had life and spoke, calling attention to the down on the cheek, to the lift of the upper lip, finally to the eyes, innocent as a stag's—eyes that never the less revealed in this ardent, complex, highly-spiritual creature intense aspirations towards a fuller existence.
One afternoon on arriving at the cemetery she seated herself on a certain flat-topped tomb, and there some minutes later Emil joined her. The look from under his rough mane came at her diagonally, as with head lowered on his hand, he sat beside her. His eyes shed on her admiration; his moustache leaped against his cheek as he smiled.