an obliviousness.
He was in the room. Still the sleeper breathed softly. It was very dark. He felt his way forward inch by inch, with his feet and hands. He touched the bed, he could hear the sleeper. He drew nearer, bending close as if his eyes would disclose whatever there was. And then, very near to his face, to his fear, he saw the round, dark head of a boy.
He recovered, turned round, saw the door ajar, a faint light revealed. And he retreated swiftly, drew the door to without fastening it, and passed rapidly down the passage. At the head of the stairs he hesitated. There was still time to flee.
But it was unthinkable. He would maintain his will. He turned past the door of the parental bedroom like a shadow, and was climbing the second flight of stairs. They creaked under his weight—it was exasperating. Ah what disaster, if the mother’s door opened just beneath him, and she saw him! It would have to be, if it were so. He held the control still.
He was not quite up these stairs when he heard a quick running of feet below, the outer door was closed and locked, he heard Ursula’s voice, then the father’s sleepy exclamation. He pressed on swiftly to the upper landing.
Again a door was ajar, a room was empty. Feeling his way forward, with the tips of his fingers, travelling rapidly, like a blind man, anxious lest Ursula should come upstairs, he found another door. There, with his preternaturally fine sense alert, he listened. He heard someone moving in bed. This would be she.
Softly now, like one who has only one sense, the tactile sense, he turned the latch. It clicked. He held still. The bed-clothes rustled. His heart did not beat. Then again he drew the latch back, and very gently pushed the door. It made a sticking noise as it gave.
‘Ursula?’ said Gudrun’s voice, frightened. He quickly opened the door and pushed it behind him.
‘Is it you, Ursula?’ came Gudrun’s frightened voice. He heard her sitting up in bed. In another moment she would scream.
‘No, it’s me,’ he said, feeling his way towards her. ‘It is I, Gerald.’
She sat motionless in her bed in sheer astonishment. She was too astonished, too much taken by surprise, even to be afraid.
‘Gerald!’ she echoed, in blank amazement. He had found his way to the bed, and his outstretched hand touched her warm breast blindly. She shrank away.
‘Let me make a light,’ she said, springing out.
He stood perfectly motionless. He heard her touch the match-box, he heard her fingers in their movement. Then he saw her in the light of a match, which she held to the candle. The light rose in the room, then sank to a small dimness, as the flame sank down on the candle, before it mounted again.
She looked at him, as he stood near the other side of the bed. His cap was pulled low over his brow, his black overcoat was buttoned close up to his chin. His face was strange and luminous. He was inevitable as a supernatural being. When she had seen him, she knew. She knew there was something fatal in the situation, and she must accept it. Yet she must challenge him.
‘How did you come up?’ she asked.
‘I walked up the stairs—the door was open.’
She looked at him.
‘I haven’t closed this door, either,’ he said. She walked swiftly across the room, and closed her door, softly, and locked it. Then she came back.
She was wonderful, with startled eyes and flushed cheeks, and her plait of hair rather short and thick down her back, and her long, fine white night-dress falling to her feet.
She saw that his boots were all clayey, even his trousers were plastered with clay. And she wondered if he had made footprints all the way up. He was a very strange figure, standing in her bedroom, near the tossed bed.
‘Why have you come?’ she asked, almost querulous.
‘I wanted to,’ he replied.
And this she could see from his face. It was fate.
‘You are so muddy,’ she said, in distaste, but gently.
He looked down at his feet.
‘I was walking in the dark,’ he replied. But he felt vividly elated. There was a pause. He stood on one side of the tumbled bed, she on the other. He did not even take his cap from his brows.
‘And what do you want of me,’ she challenged.
He looked aside, and did not answer. Save for the extreme beauty and mystic attractiveness of this distinct, strange face, she would have sent him away. But his face was too wonderful and undiscovered to her. It fascinated her with the fascination of pure beauty, cast a spell on her, like nostalgia, an ache.
‘What do you want of me?’ she repeated in an estranged voice.
He pulled off his cap, in a movement of dream-liberation, and went across to her. But he could not touch her, because she stood barefoot in her night-dress, and he was muddy and damp. Her eyes, wide and large and wondering, watched him, and asked him the ultimate question.
‘I came—because I must,’ he said. ‘Why do you ask?’
She looked at him in doubt and wonder.
‘I must ask,’ she said.
He shook his head slightly.
