Page 487 - women-in-love

she bade her ‘Good-night.’ Then she went slowly to the door,
as if she were unaccustomed to walking. At the door she
lifted her face to him, implicitly. He kissed her.
‘Don’t come any further with me,’ she said, in her barely
audible voice. ‘I don’t want you any further.’
He bade her good-night, watched her across to the stairs
and mount slowly. Then he closed the door and came back
to Gudrun. Gudrun rose also, to go.
‘A queer being, my mother,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ replied Gudrun.
‘She has her own thoughts.’
‘Yes,’ said Gudrun.
Then they were silent.
‘You want to go?’ he asked. ‘Half a minute, I’ll just have
a horse put in—‘
‘No,’ said Gudrun. ‘I want to walk.’
He had promised to walk with her down the long, lonely
mile of drive, and she wanted this.
‘You might JUST as well drive,’ he said.
‘I’d MUCH RATHER walk,’ she asserted, with empha-
sis.
‘You would! Then I will come along with you. You know
where your things are? I’ll put boots on.’
He put on a cap, and an overcoat over his evening dress.
They went out into the night.
‘Let us light a cigarette,’ he said, stopping in a sheltered
angle of the porch. ‘You have one too.’
So, with the scent of tobacco on the night air, they set
off down the dark drive that ran between close-cut hedges

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