Page 489 - women-in-love

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘There’s nobody else could do it, if you
wouldn’t.’
‘That is true,’ she said to herself, with a thrill of strange,
fatal elation.
As they walked, he seemed to lift her nearer and nearer
to himself, till she moved upon the firm vehicle of his body.
He was so strong, so sustaining, and he could not be
opposed. She drifted along in a wonderful interfusion of
physical motion, down the dark, blowy hillside. Far across
shone the little yellow lights of Beldover, many of them,
spread in a thick patch on another dark hill. But he and
she were walking in perfect, isolated darkness, outside the
world.
‘But how much do you care for me!’ came her voice,
almost querulous. ‘You see, I don’t know, I don’t under-
stand!’
‘How much!’ His voice rang with a painful elation. ‘I
don’t know either—but everything.’ He was startled by his
own declaration. It was true. So he stripped himself of every
safeguard, in making this admission to her. He cared every-
thing for her—she was everything.
‘But I can’t believe it,’ said her low voice, amazed, trem-
bling. She was trembling with doubt and exultance. This
was the thing she wanted to hear, only this. Yet now she
heard it, heard the strange clapping vibration of truth in
his voice as he said it, she could not believe. She could not
believe—she did not believe. Yet she believed, triumphantly,
with fatal exultance.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you believe it? It’s true. It

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