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Eddie opened his eyes, from which her own shadow completely cut the light from the sky. At the same time frantic and impervious, his eyes looked terribly up at her. To stop her looking at him he pulled her head down, so that their two faces blotted each other out, and returned on her mouth what seemed so much her own kiss that she even tasted the salt of her own tears. Then he began to push her away gently. "Go away," he said, "for God's sake go away and be quiet."

"Then don't think. I can't bear it when you do that."

Rolling away from her, Eddie huntedly got to his feet and began to go round the thicket: she heard the tips of the hazels whipping against his coat. He paused at the mouth of every tunnel, as though each were a shut door, to stand grinding his heels into the soundless moss. Portia, lying in her form in the grass, looked at the crushed place where he had lain by her—then, turning her head the other way, detected two or three violets, which, reaching out, she picked. She held them over her head and looked at the light through them. Watching her from his distance, spying upon the movement, he said: "Why do you pick those? To comfort yourself?"

"I don't know...."

"One cannot leave things alone."

She could do nothing but look up at the violets, which now shook in her raised hand. In every pause of Eddie's movements a sealike rustling could be heard all through the woody distance, a tidal movement under the earth. "Wretched violets," said Eddie. "Why pick them for nothing? You'd better put them in my buttonhole." He came and knelt impatiently down beside her; she knelt up, fumbling with the stalks of the flowers, her face a little below his. She drew the stalks through till the violets looked at her from against the tweed of his coat. She looked no higher till he caught both her wrists.

"I don't know how you feel," he said, "I daren't ask myself; I've never wanted to know. Don't look at me like that! And don't tremble like that—it's more than I can bear. Something awful will happen. I cannot feel what you feel: I'm shut up in myself. All I know is, you've been so sweet. It's no use holding on to me, I shall only drown you. Portia, you don't know what you are doing."

"I do know."

"Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone. I haven't wanted to hurt you; I haven't wanted to touch you in any way. When I try and show you the truth I fill you with such despair. Life is so much more impossible than you think. Don't you see we're all full of horrible power, working against each other however much we may love? You agonise me by being so agonised. Oh cry out loud, if you must: cry, cry—don't just let those terrible meek tears roll down your face like that. What you want is the whole of me—isn't it, isn't it?—and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist. What's started this terrible trouble in you, that you can't be happy with the truth of me that you had—however small it was, whatever might be beyond it? Ever since that evening when you gave me my hat, I've been as true to you as I've got it in me to be. Don't force me to where untruth starts. You say nothing would make you hate me. But once make me hate myself and you'd make me hate you."

"But you do hate yourself. I wanted to comfort you."

"But you have. Ever since you gave me my hat."

"Why may we not kiss?"

"It's so desolating."

"But you and me—" she began. She stopped, then pressing her face into his coat, under the violets, twisting her wrists in his unsure grip, she said some inaudible things, and at last moaned: "I can't bear it when you talk." When she got her wrists free, she once more locked her arms round him, she started rocking her body with such passionless violence that, as they both knelt, he rocked in her arms. "You stay alone in yourself, you stay alone in yourself!"

Eddie, white as a stone, said: "You must let go of me."

Sitting back on her heels, Portia instinctively