Page 362 - women-in-love

this moon-brilliant hardness. She could feel her soul crying
out in her, lamenting desolately.
She saw a shadow moving by the water. It would be Birkin.
He had come back then, unawares. She accepted it without
remark, nothing mattered to her. She sat down among the
roots of the alder tree, dim and veiled, hearing the sound of
the sluice like dew distilling audibly into the night. The is-
lands were dark and half revealed, the reeds were dark also,
only some of them had a little frail fire of reflection. A fish
leaped secretly, revealing the light in the pond. This fire of
the chill night breaking constantly on to the pure darkness,
repelled her. She wished it were perfectly dark, perfectly,
and noiseless and without motion. Birkin, small and dark
also, his hair tinged with moonlight, wandered nearer. He
was quite near, and yet he did not exist in her. He did not
know she was there. Supposing he did something he would
not wish to be seen doing, thinking he was quite private?
But there, what did it matter? What did the small priyacies
matter? How could it matter, what he did? How can there be
any secrets, we are all the same organisms? How can there
be any secrecy, when everything is known to all of us?
He was touching unconsciously the dead husks of flow-
ers as he passed by, and talking disconnectedly to himself.
‘You can’t go away,’ he was saying. ‘There IS no away. You
only withdraw upon yourself.’
He threw a dead flower-husk on to the water.
‘An antiphony—they lie, and you sing back to them.
There wouldn’t have to be any truth, if there weren’t any
lies. Then one needn’t assert anything—‘

362 Women in Love