‘Not quite so fast!’ she was compelled to cry out to her companion when, having reached the smooth turf of the crest of the hill, Canyot quickened his pace still more.
He turned round and looked at her.
They were alone in the midst of a wide treeless expanse, an expanse unbroken by any other human being, unbroken by bush or shrub or animal. Above their heads the larks sang; large cool shadows, one after another, floated over them, thrown by slow-travelling clouds, and from the little patches of thyme at their feet arose that peculiar faint sun-burnt pungency which more than anything else seems to be the attribute of the Downs.
The immense undulating upland, along the crest of which they were now moving, was like some huge wave of the sea struck into immobility. This great green wave held up their two figures, isolating them completely from the rest of the world; carrying them through infinite blue ether on the planetary motion of the round earth.
He stopped at her words and looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed and she was drawing her breath in little gasps.
‘Let’s sit down here,’ he said.
They sat down side by side, the smell of the thyme becoming vividly distinct and little groups of blue butterflies chasing one another backwards and forwards across their feet. Her hands lay on her lap and Canyot possessed himself of one of them, holding it grimly, tightly, passionately.
She could hardly release it without an exertion of moral force for which at that moment, as she panted for breath, she lacked the energy.
She had not realized· how easy it would be for Canyot to repossess himself of such a privilege. She had not realized how the mere physical habit of lovemaking may outlast the emotional importance of it.
He on his part took what was a mixture of pique with Richard, physical exhaustion, the revival of old habitual gestures, and real· affection for himself, for something much deeper in her. He had grasped her fingers so fiercely, just because he had not supposed for a moment that she would let him retain them. She did let him retain them; and his passion gathered intensity.
‘I hate human beings,’ she said after a few minutes’ silence. And in her heart, she thought, What does it matter if I do let Robert hold my hand? Richard has got some woman in Paris who writes to him letters that I’m not allowed to see. He is evidently entangled still with her or he would have told me the whole story. And it doesn’t seem fair that I should keep Robert at a distance when he goes on with his Paris entanglements.
‘I hate all human beings,’ she repeated, ‘because they always spoil everything. I do it myself, I know. I spoil things for myself.’
Canyot gazed in a kind of sombre ecstasy at her downcast profile.
‘You’ve spoilt everything for me, Nelly,’ he said; ‘but I don’t hate you for it. I like things to be spoilt! There’s something in me that is glad when things are spoilt. I’m glad you’re married. I’m glad I’ve got to leave you in six days. I’m glad you are tormenting me at this moment with your speeches and your ways.’
His tone was too familiar to her, and the peculiar mood he was in too reminiscent of former times, for Nelly to be shocked or startled.
She gave him a little flickering smile. ‘Dear old Rob!’ she said.
He lifted her hand to his lips but did not release it.
‘I don’t know whether you can possibly understand me,’ he continued. ‘You probably can’t. But the fact is I’ve come to the conclusion that if you can’t be glad of everything that happens to you, of everything that happens in your life, you’d better kill yourself at once. It’s one or the other, Nell.’
‘It’s certainly one or the other with you, Robert,’ she answered; ‘but you needn’t hurt my hand, whichever way it is.’
He did not release her fingers even then; he went on in the same strain.
‘You can’t get back from me, you know, any of the things that have happened between us. Every kiss you’ve ever given me still remains mine and no one else’s.’
‘I see you put my kisses with all the other horrid things you’re glad to have happened to you,’ remarked the girl, in a voice full of a teasing affectionate mockery; ‘but to keep true to your present theory, what you ought to remember best are the times when I’ve been most bad to you.’
‘You’ve never been bad to me,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t be. You can hurt me and hurt me and hurt me. You can marry a hundred Richards. I shall only like you the better. And it’ll be part of what I have to put into my paint box.’
‘Oh there’s a ladybird!’ cried Nelly suddenly. ‘Do look!’ She took advantage of his disarmed attention to release her hand.
‘What do you mean by your paint box?’ she inquired when the ladybird had flown away.
‘I mean,’ said Robert, making a futile effort to regain her lost fingers, ‘that my painting draws its life from every single thing which destiny takes away from me.’
The girl looked at him in whimsical gravity. ‘Then if you had had me,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t be in your paint box any more?’
‘The Nelly part of you wouldn’t,’ he answered solemnly, ‘but your soul would — because I should never have got hold of that!’
‘But the Nelly part of me is my soul,’ she protested; ‘that’s what I am really and truly.’
He looked at her grimly and sardonically.
‘No! No! my dear,’ he said. ‘This is Nelly,’ and he touched her shoulder. ‘And this is Nelly,’ and he touched her knee. ‘But the thing in you which says “I am I” isn’t Nelly at all. It isn’t even a girl. It isn’t even a human being.’
She smiled somewhat uneasily. ‘What is it then?’ she asked. ‘I don’t at all like the idea of being something that isn’t myself.’
‘It is yourself. It’s the self that nobody in the world can ever take away or invade or imprison, as they can this Nelly,’ and he gave her propped-up knees a vicious little shake. ‘But it’s something that I could never, never get hold of, even if I had you absolutely for my own.’
She looked frowningly at the hot grey-green turf at her feet where a heavily winged brown butterfly was fluttering aimlessly.
‘What is it you really care for in me?’ she suddenly inquired.
The thoughts that had led her to this were queerly complicated. That discovery that Richard corresponded with some Paris woman and received letters which he dreaded to show to her had stained with a sort of muddy tincture the whole outlook of her mind. It not only spoilt Richard for her. It spoilt herself for herself. It muddied up, as it were, the whole business of love between human beings. It made her doubt her own integrity, her own charm. If she didn’t satisfy Richard, if her love couldn’t work the miracle of making them really one — mustn’t that be because there was something wanting in herself? She felt a horrible suspicion of her own nature. She realized for the first time how cruelly alone everyone is in the world; how one doesn’t evoke love simply by being what one is without any effort.
It was at that point in her train of thought that she said, ‘What is it in me?’
Her question completely broke down Canyot’s self-control. He jumped up from the ground. He took her by the wrist and swung her up upon her feet. He threw his arm round her and embraced her passionately; kissing her so brusquely, that he kissed the tip of her nose, and her open mouth and her lace collar, in one rapid series of indiscriminate hugs.