All the world was dark grey. Paul scrambled quickly down with his basket, tearing his shirt-sleeve as he did so.
“They are lovely,” said Miriam, fingering the cherries.
“I’ve torn my sleeve,” he answered.
She took the three-cornered rip, saying:
“I shall have to mend it.” It was near the shoulder. She put her ringers through the tear. “How warm!” she said.
He laughed. There was a new, strange note in his voice, one that made her pant.
“Shall we stay out?” he said.
“Won’t it rain?” she asked.
“No, let us walk a little way.”
They went down the fields and into the thick plantation of fir-trees and pines.
“Shall we go in among the trees?” he asked.
“Do you want to?”
“Yes.”
It was very dark among the firs, and the sharp spines pricked her face. She was afraid. Paul was silent and strange.
“I like the darkness,” he said. “I wish it were thicker—good, thick darkness.”
He seemed to be almost unaware of her as a person: she was only to him then a woman. She was afraid.
He stood against a pine-tree trunk and took her in his arms. She relinquished herself to him, but it was a sacrifice in which she felt something of horror. This thick-voiced, oblivious man was a stranger to her.
Later it began to rain. The pine-trees smelled very strong. Paul lay with his head on the ground, on the dead pine-needles, listening to the sharp hiss of the rain—a steady, keen noise. His heart was down, very heavy. Now he realized that she had not been with him all the time, that her soul had stood apart, in a sort of horror. He was physically at rest, but no more. Very dreary at heart, very sad, and very tender, his fingers wandered over her face pitifully. Now again she loved him deeply. He was tender and beautiful.
“The rain!” he said.
“Yes—is it coming on you?”
She put her hands over him, on his hair, on his shoulders, to feel if the raindrops fell on him. She loved him dearly. He, as he lay with his face on the dead pine-leaves, felt extraordinarily quiet. He did not mind if the raindrops came on him: he would have lain and got wet through: he felt as if
