Then I had landed, and was going back to where her horse stood still and trembling.
We exchanged no greetings. She slid from her saddle into my arms, and for one instant I held her. "Those great wings," she said, and that was all.
She lay in my arms, and I thought for a moment she had fainted.
"Very near a nasty accident," said Cothope, coming up and regarding our grouping with disfavour. He took her horse by the bridle. "Very dangerous thing coming across us like that."
Beatrice disengaged herself from me, stood for a moment trembling, and then sat down on the turf. "I'll just sit down for a moment," she said.
"Oh!" she said.
She covered her face with her hands while Cothope looked at her with an expression between suspicion and impatience.
For some moments nobody moved. Then Cothope remarked that perhaps he'd better get her water.
As for me I was filled with a new outrageous idea begotten I scarcely know how from this incident with its instant contacts and swift emotions, and that was that I must make love to and possess Beatrice. I see no particular reason why that thought should have come to me in that moment, but it did. I do not believe that before then I had thought of our relations in such terms at all. Suddenly, as I remember it, the factor of passion came. She crouched there, and I stood over her and neither of us said a word. But it was just as though something had been shouted from the sky.
Cothope had gone twenty paces perhaps when she uncovered her face. "I shan't want any water," she said. "Call him back."
