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‘Yes.’
‘Well, you wait for me down by the stile, and I’ll come
when I’m ready.’
He waited under the stars, sitting on the stile, and the
hedges with their ripening blackberries were high on each
side of him. From the earth rose rich scents of the night,
and the air was soft and still. His heart was beating mad-
ly. He could not understand anything of what happened to
him. He associated passion with cries and tears and vehe-
mence, and there was nothing of this in Sally; but he did
not know what else but passion could have caused her to
give herself. But passion for him? He would not have been
surprised if she had fallen to her cousin, Peter Gann, tall,
spare, and straight, with his sunburned face and long, easy
stride. Philip wondered what she saw in him. He did not
know if she loved him as he reckoned love. And yet? He was
convinced of her purity. He had a vague inkling that many
things had combined, things that she felt though was un-
conscious of, the intoxication of the air and the hops and
the night, the healthy instincts of the natural woman, a
tenderness that overflowed, and an affection that had in it
something maternal and something sisterly; and she gave
all she had to give because her heart was full of charity.
He heard a step on the road, and a figure came out of the
darkness.
‘Sally,’ he murmured.
She stopped and came to the stile, and with her came
sweet, clean odours of the country-side. She seemed to car-
ry with her scents of the new-mown hay, and the savour of

Of Human Bondage