She sat after that without speaking on his knee, his arms round her, her
head on his breast.
She was thinking.
Try as she might to empty herself of everything except acceptance and
love, she found that only her body was controllable. That lay quite
passive in Wemyss's arms; but her mind refused to lie passive, it would
think. Strange how tightly one's body could be held, how close to
somebody else's heart, and yet one wasn't anywhere near the holder. They
locked you up in prisons that way, holding your body tight and thinking
they had got you, and all the while your mind--you--was as free as the
wind and the sunlight. She couldn't help it, she struggled hard to feel
as she had felt when she woke up and saw him sitting near her; but the
way he had refused to be friends, the complete absence of any readiness
in him to meet her, not half, nor even a quarter, but a little bit of
the way, had for the first time made her consciously afraid of him.
She was afraid of him, and she was afraid of herself in relation to him.
He seemed outside anything of which she had experience. He appeared not
to be--he anyhow had not been that day--generous. There seemed no way,
at any point, by which one could reach him. What was he _really_ like?
How long was it going to take her really to know him? Years? And she
herself,--she now knew, now that she had made their acquaintance, that
she couldn't at all bear scenes. Any scenes. Either with herself, or in
her presence with other people. She couldn't bear them while they were
going on, and she couldn't bear the exhaustion of the long drawn-out
making up at the end. And she not only didn't see how they were to be
avoided--for no care, no caution would for ever be able to watch what
she said, or did, or looked, or, equally important, what she didn't say,
or didn't do, or didn't look--but she was afraid, afraid with a most
dismal foreboding, that some day after one of them, or in the middle of
one of them, her nerve would give out and she would collapse. Collapse
deplorably; into just something that howled and whimpered.
This, however, was horrible. She mustn't think like this. Sufficient
unto the day, she thought, trying to make herself smile, is the
whimpering thereof. Besides, she wouldn't whimper, she wouldn't go to
pieces, she would discover a way to manage. Where there was so much love
there must be a way to manage.
He had pulled her blouse back, and was kissing her shoulder and asking
her whose very own wife she was. But what was the good of love-making if
it was immediately preceded or followed or interrupted by anger? She was
afraid of him. She wasn't in this kissing at all. Perhaps she had been
afraid of him unconsciously for a long while. What was that abjectness
on the honeymoon, that anxious desire to please, to avoid offending, but
fear? It was love afraid; afraid of getting hurt, of not going to be
able to believe whole-heartedly, of not going to be able--this was the
worst--to be proud of its beloved. But now, after her experiences
to-day, she had a fear of him more separate, more definite, distinct
from love. Strange to be afraid of him and love him at the same time.
Perhaps if she didn't love him she wouldn't be afraid of him. No, she
didn't think she would then, because then nothing that he said would
reach her heart. Only she couldn't imagine that. He _was_ her heart.
'What are you thinking of?' asked Wemyss, who having finished with her
shoulder noticed how quiet she was.
She could tell him truthfully; a moment sooner and she couldn't have. 'I
was thinking,' she said, 'that you are my heart.'
'Take care of your heart then, won't you?' said Wemyss.
'We both will,' said Lucy.
'Of course,' said Wemyss. 'That's understood. Why state it?'