After the kiss, her eyes again slowly filled with tears. She sat still, away from him, with her face drooped aside, and her hands folded in her lap. The tears fell very slowly. There was complete silence. He too sat there motionless and silent on the hearth-rug. The strange pain of his heart that was broken seemed to consume him. That he should love her? That this was love! That he should be ripped open in this way! Him, a doctor! How they would all jeer if they knew! It was agony to him to think they might know.
In the curious naked pain of the thought he looked again to her. She was sitting there drooped into a muse. He saw a tear fall, and his heart flared hot. He saw for the first time that one of her shoulders was quite uncovered, one arm bare, he could see one of her small breasts; dimly, because it had become almost dark in the room.
'Why are you crying?' he asked, in an altered voice.
She looked up at him, and behind her tears the consciousness of her situation for the first time brought a dark look of shame to her eyes. 'I'm not crying, really,' she said, watching him, half frightened. He reached his hand, and softly closed it on her bare arm. 'I love you! I love you!' he said in a soft, low vibrating voice, unlike himself. She shrank, and dropped her head. The soft, penetrating grip of his hand on her arm distressed her. She looked up at him.
'I want to go,' she said. 'I want to go and get you some dry things.'
'Why?' he said. 'I'm all right.'
'But I want to go,' she said. 'And I want you to change your things.'
He released her arm, and she wrapped herself in the blanket, looking at him, rather frightened. And still she did not rise. 'Kiss me,' she said wistfully. He kissed her, but briefly, half in anger. Then, after a second, she rose nervously, all mixed up in the blanket. He
watched her in her confusion as she tried to extricate herself and wrap herself up so that she could walk. He watched her relentlessly, as she knew. And as she went, the blanket trailing, and as he saw a glimpse of her feet and her white leg, he tried to remember her as she was when he had wrapped her in the blanket. But then he didn't want to remember, because she had been nothing to him then, and his nature revolted from remembering her as she was when she was nothing to him.
A tumbling muffled noise from within the dark house startled him. Then he heard her voice: 'There are clothes.' He rose and went to the foot of the stairs, and gathered up the garments she had thrown down. Then he came back to the fire, to rub himself down and dress. He grinned at his own appearance when he had finished.
The fire was sinking, so he put on coal. The house was now quite dark, save for the light of a street-lamp that shone in faintly from beyond the holly trees. He lit the gas with matches he found on the mantelpiece. Then he emptied the pockets of his own clothes, and threw all his wet things in a heap into the scullery. After which he gathered up her sodden clothes, gently, and put them in a separate heap on the copper-top in the scullery.
It was six o'clock on the clock. His own watch had stopped. He ought to go
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WHY THE NOVEL MATTERS / 2269
back to the surgery. He waited, and still she did not come down. So he went
to the foot of the stairs and called:
'1 shall have to go.'
Almost immediately he heard her coming down. She had on her best dress of black voile, and her hair was tidy, but still damp. She looked at him?and in spite of herself, smiled.
'I don't like you in those clothes,' she said.
'Do I look a sight?' he answered.
They were shy of one another.
'I'll make you some tea,' she said.
'No, I must go.'
'Must you?' And she looked at him again with the wide, strained, doubtful eyes. And again, from the pain of his breast, he knew how he loved her. He went and bent to kiss her, gently, passionately, with his heart's painful kiss.
'And my hair smells so horrible,' she murmured in distraction. 'And I'm so awful, I'm so awful! Oh no, I'm too awful.' And she broke into bitter, heartbroken sobbing. 'You can't want to love me, I'm horrible.'
'Don't be silly, don't be silly,' he said, trying to comfort her, kissing her, holding her in his arms. 'I want you, I want to marry you, we're going to be married, quickly, quickly?to-morrow if I can.'
But she only sobbed terribly, and cried:
'I feel awful. I feel awful. I feel I'm horrible to you.'
'No, I want you, I want you,' was all he answered, blindly, with that terrible intonation which frightened her almost more than her horror lest he should not want her.
1922
Why the Novel Matters
We have curious ideas of ourselves. We think of ourselves as a body with a spirit in it, or a body with a soul in it, or a body with a mind in it. Mens sana in corf ore sano.' The years drink up the wine, and at last throw the bottle away, the body, of course, being the bottle.
It is a funny sort of superstition. Why should I look at my hand, as it so cleverly writes these words, and decide that it is a mere nothing compared to the mind that directs it? Is there really any huge difference between my hand and my brain? Or my mind? My hand is alive, it flickers with a life of its own. It meets all the strange universe in touch, and learns a vast number of things, and knows a vast number of things. My hand, as it writes these words, slips gaily along, jumps like a grasshopper to dot an i, feels the table rather cold, gets a little bored if I write too long, has its own rudiments of thought, and is just as much me as is my brain, my mind, or my soul. Why
