He laughed; then drew his breath in suddenly and stopped laughing. Down came his stranger’s face to hers. She felt his mouth hard, and her own terribly soft and yielding. The pressure of his lips was painful, alarming,—a contact never dreamed of. She drew back and saw, in the mirror opposite, her own white-faced reflection, one hand to its mouth.
‘To-night,’ he said very low, ‘shall I come and fetch you in the canoe? We’ll go down, down,—to the islands. Just us two. Shall I come?’
She nodded, speechless.
‘Late. Be waiting for me about eleven.’ He added, in his usual, careless voice: ‘Not unless it’s fine, of course. There may be a thunderstorm.’
She went out of the room, into gold deeps of light and the evening shadows.
She came back into her own garden. The sinking sun flooded the lawn. Its radiance was slit with long narrow shades, and the great chestnut trees piled themselves above it in massed somnolence. The roses were open to the very heart, fainting in their own fragrance; and around them the dim lavender-hedges still bore white butterflies upon their spear-tips. The weeping beech flowed downwards, a full green fountain, whispering silkily. Forms, lights, colours vibrated, burned, ached, leapt with excess of life. The house was wide open at every door and window; and Mamma, going up the steps with a basket of flowers, paused and drew up the striped Venetian blind.
3
For hours, it seemed, they had not spoken a word. The paddle fell now and again upon the water with a light musical clash, like the sound of the shattering of thinnest crystal. Now and again the moving blade woke the water to a rich and secret murmur; as if a voice half woke out of sleep to speak a tender word; then swooned into sleep again.
She saw his arm move and glimmer; his form was just discernible in the stern of the boat, shoulders bowed forward, head motionless. Once or twice he started to whistle a fragment of tune, and then was silent again.
She lay among cushions in the bows, and watched the dark yellow moon rise, bare of clouds, behind the poplar trees. The night was heavy and still.