Away at the landing stage, tiniest points of
coloured rays were stringing themselves in the dusk. The launch was
being illuminated. All round, shadow was gathering from the trees.
Gerald, white like a presence in his summer clothes, was following down
the open grassy slope. Gudrun waited for him to come up. Then she
softly put out her hand and touched him, saying softly:
'Don't be angry with me.'
A flame flew over him, and he was unconscious. Yet he stammered:
'I'm not angry with you. I'm in love with you.'
His mind was gone, he grasped for sufficient mechanical control, to
save himself. She laughed a silvery little mockery, yet intolerably
caressive.
'That's one way of putting it,' she said.
The terrible swooning burden on his mind, the awful swooning, the loss
of all his control, was too much for him. He grasped her arm in his one
hand, as if his hand were iron.
'It's all right, then, is it?' he said, holding her arrested.
She looked at the face with the fixed eyes, set before her, and her
blood ran cold.
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