She was saved, he had gone, flinging on his coat and snatching his
carpet-bag, but for long she remained trembling and fearing his return.
She shuddered at intervals as she remembered their struggle, conducted
in that horrible silence; their antagonism had been so condensed; none
of it could slip away in words. She could still feel where his fingers
had gripped into her flesh. If Calthorpe had not come! Now, now, they
were on the road to Spalding; she was alone in the house, she was to
breakfast with Silas and Linnet. Her shudders of horror gave place to
the sweet shivering she knew when she thought of Linnet, an etherealised
desire, a trembling of her spirit more than of her body, a going out
towards a young and fit companion, who by a refinement of perfection was
also a lover. Gradually she ceased to think of Gregory, and lost herself
in the other thought, lying propped up on her pillow with an unconscious
smile of heavenly happiness in her eyes and upon her lips. She rose
presently, and in the same dream started to dress, delighting in the
touch of the cold water she splashed over her throat and arms. The
puritanical neatness of each garment, and the fibre of her laundered
linen, likewise satisfied her as she became clothed. She had noticed
how, without any exaggeration of fancy, small physical experiences were
intensified of late,—colours were brighter, the song of birds more
ringing, her flesh more sensitive to the touch, and in looking at people
she had observed how the pores of their skin were distinct, or the firm
planting of eyelashes, and sweep of eyebrow,—all these things, that were
foolishly unimportant, but that added a vividness to daily life. She was
in every detail more keenly alive; her nostrils dilated to smell the
air, and she touched the sill of the window, where the wood was faintly
warm under the sun, with a sense of comradeship. She moved, too, with a
difference; her tread became resilient; her foot was springy as it
poised upon the ground. Her small head carried itself with a light
elasticity in the air, and she was actually conscious of the soft mass
of her hair that caressed the nape of her neck as she turned her head.
She had a wish for woods and cornlands; to sit in the roots of a tree
beside a brook, allowing the water to eddy between her staying fingers;
to bathe her body in a lake or in the surf of the sea. So, in loving one
man, one loved the whole company of earth? Love was illimitable indeed,
if it conferred that privilege, a wider thing than mere absorption in a
fellow-being that was a creature, after all, of limitations as narrow as
any other.