she set off down the hill, carrying her little case. Her feet felt light, her legs felt long and strong. She glanced over her shoulder again. The young policeman was following her, and she laughed to herself. Her limbs felt so lithe and so strong, if she wished she could easily run faster than he. If she wished she could easily kill him, even with her hands.
So it seemed to her. But why kill him? He was a decent young fellow. She had in front of her eyes the dark face among the holly bushes, with the brilliant, mocking eyes. Her breast felt full of power, and her legs felt long and strong and wild. She was surprised herself at the strong, bright, throbbing sensation beneath her breasts, a sensation of triumph and of rosy anger. Her hands felt keen on her wrists. She who had always declared she had not a muscle in her body! Even now, it was not muscle, it was a sort of flame.
Suddenly it began to snow heavily, with fierce frozen puffs of wind. The snow was small, in frozen grains, and hit sharp on her face. It seemed to whirl round her as if she herself were whirling in a cloud. But she did not mind. There was a flame in her, her limbs felt flamey and strong, amid the whirl.
And the whirling, snowy air seemed full of presences, full of strange unheard voices. She was used to the sensation of noises taking place which she could not hear. This sensation became very strong. She felt something was happening in the wild air.
The London air was no longer heavy and clammy, saturated with ghosts of the unwilling dead. A new, clean tempest swept down from the Pole, and there were noises.
Voices were calling. In spite of her deafness she could hear someone, several voices, calling and whistling, as if many people were hallooing through the air:
“He’s come back! Aha! He’s come back!”
There was a wild, whistling, jubilant sound of voices in the storm of snow. Then obscured lightning winked through the snow in the air.
“Is that thunder and lightning?” she asked of the young policeman, as she stood still, waiting for his form to emerge through the veil of whirling snow.
“Seems like it to me,” he said.
And at that very moment the lightning blinked again, and the dark, laughing face was near her face, it almost touched her cheek.
She started back, but a flame of delight went over her.
“There!” she said. “Did you see that?”
“It lightened,” said the policeman.
She was looking at him almost angrily. But then the clean, fresh animal look of his skin and the tame-animal look in his frightened eyes amused her, she laughed her low, triumphant laugh. He was obviously afraid, like a frightened dog that sees something uncanny.
The storm suddenly whistled louder, more violently, and, with a strange noise like castanets, she seemed to hear voices clapping and crying:
“He is here! He’s come back!”
She nodded her head gravely.
The policeman and she moved on side by side. She lived alone in a little stucco house in a side street down the hill. There was a church and a grove of trees and then the little old row of houses. The wind blew fiercely, thick with snow. Now and again a taxi went by, with its lights showing weirdly. But the world seemed empty, uninhabited save by snow and voices.
As the girl and the policeman turned past the grove of trees near the church, a great whirl of wind and snow made them stand still, and in the wild confusion they heard a whirling of sharp, delighted voices, something like seagulls, crying:
“He’s here! He’s here!”
“Well, I’m jolly glad he’s back,” said the girl calmly.
“What’s that?” said the nervous policeman, hovering near the girl.
The wind let them move forward. As they passed along the railings it seemed to them the doors of the church were open, and the windows were out, and the snow and the voices were blowing in a wild career all through the church.
“How extraordinary that they left the church open!” said the girl.
The policeman stood still. He could not reply.
And as they stood they listened to the wind and the church full of whirling voices all calling confusedly.
“
It came from the church: a sound of low, subtle, endless laughter, a strange, naked sound.
“Now I hear it!” she said.
But the policeman did not speak. He stood cowed, with his tail between his legs, listening to the strange noises in the church.
The wind must have blown out one of the windows, for they could see the snow whirling in volleys through the black gap, and whirling inside the church like a dim light. There came a sudden crash, followed by a burst of chuckling, naked laughter. The snow seemed to make a queer light inside the building, like ghosts moving, big and tall.
There was more laughter, and a tearing sound. On the wind, pieces of paper, leaves of books, came whirling among the snow through the dark window. Then a white thing, soaring like a crazy bird, rose up on the wind as if it had wings, and lodged on a black tree outside, struggling. It was the altar-cloth.
There came a bit of gay, trilling music. The wind was running over the organ-pipes like pan-pipes, quickly up and down. Snatches of wild, gay, trilling music, and bursts of the naked low laughter.
“Really!” said the girl. “This is most extraordinary. Do you hear the music and the people laughing?”
“Yes, I hear somebody on the organ!” said the policeman.
“And do you get the puff of warm wind? Smelling of spring. Almond blossom, that’s what it is! A most marvellous scent of almond blossom.
She went on triumphantly past the church, and came to the row of little old houses. She entered her own gate in the little railed entrance.
“Here I am!” she said finally. “I’m home now. Thank you very much for coming with me.”
She looked at the young policeman. His whole body was white as a wall with snow, and in the vague light of the arc-lamp from the street his face was humble and frightened.
“Can I come in and warm myself a bit?” he asked humbly. She knew it was fear rather than cold that froze him. He was in mortal fear.
“Well!” she said. “Stay down in the sitting-room if you like. But don’t come upstairs, because I am alone in the house. You can make up the fire in the sitting-room, and you can go when you are warm.”
She left him on the big, low couch before the fire, his face bluish and blank with fear. He rolled his blue eyes after her as she left the room. But she went up to her bedroom, and fastened her door.
In the morning she was in her studio upstairs in her little house, looking at her own paintings and laughing to herself. Her canaries were talking and shrilly whistling in the sunshine that followed the storm. The cold snow outside was still clean, and the white glare in the air gave the effect of much stronger sunshine than actually existed.
She was looking at her own paintings, and chuckling to herself over their comicalness. Suddenly they struck her as absolutely absurd. She quite enjoyed looking at them, they seemed to her so grotesque. Especially her self- portrait, with its nice brown hair and its slightly opened rabbit-mouth and its baffled, uncertain rabbit eyes. She looked at the painted face and laughed in a long, rippling laugh, till the yellow canaries like faded daffodils almost went mad in an effort to sing louder. The girl’s long, rippling laugh sounded through the house uncannily.
The housekeeper, a rather sad-faced young woman of a superior sort – nearly all people in England are of the superior sort, superiority being an English ailment – came in with an inquiring and rather disapproving look.
“Did you call, Miss James?” she asked loudly.
“No. No, I didn’t call. Don’t shout, I can hear quite well,” replied the girl.
The housekeeper looked at her again.
“You knew there was a young man in the sitting-room?” she said.
“No. Really!” cried the girl. “What, the young policeman? I’d forgotten all about him. He came in the storm to warm himself. Hasn’t he gone?”
