But although the chill night had drawn them
close together in the dog-cart, they were as widely separated as if oceans
were between them. So far as lay in his power he had hidden the annoyance
that the intrusion of her society had occasioned him; and, to deceive her,
very little concealment was necessary. So long as she saw him she seemed to
live in a dream, unconscious of every other thought.
They rolled through a gradual effacement of things, seeing the lights of
the farmhouses in the long plain start into existence, and then remain
fixed, like gold beetles pinned on a blue curtain. The chill evening drew
her to him, till they seemed one; and full of the intimate happiness of the
senses which comes of a long day spent in the open air, she chattered of
indifferent things. He thought how pleasant the drive would be were he with
Mrs. Bentley--or, for the matter of that, with any one with whom he could
talk about the novel that had interested him. They rolled along the smooth
wide road, watching the streak of light growing narrower in a veil of light
grey cloud drawn athwart the sky. Overpowered by her love, the girl hardly
noticed his silence; and when they passed through the night of an
overhanging wood her flesh thrilled, and a little faintness came over her;
for the leaves that brushed her face had seemed like a kiss from her lover.
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