Page 510 - women-in-love

She saw that his boots were all clayey, even his trousers
were plastered with clay. And she wondered if he had made
footprints all the way up. He was a very strange figure,
standing in her bedroom, near the tossed bed.
‘Why have you come?’ she asked, almost querulous.
‘I wanted to,’ he replied.
And this she could see from his face. It was fate.
‘You are so muddy,’ she said, in distaste, but gently.
He looked down at his feet.
‘I was walking in the dark,’ he replied. But he felt viv-
idly elated. There was a pause. He stood on one side of the
tumbled bed, she on the other. He did not even take his cap
from his brows.
‘And what do you want of me,’ she challenged.
He looked aside, and did not answer. Save for the ex-
treme beauty and mystic attractiveness of this distinct,
strange face, she would have sent him away. But his face was
too wonderful and undiscovered to her. It fascinated her
with the fascination of pure beauty, cast a spell on her, like
nostalgia, an ache.
‘What do you want of me?’ she repeated in an estranged
voice.
He pulled off his cap, in a movement of dream-libera-
tion, and went across to her. But he could not touch her,
because she stood barefoot in her night-dress, and he was
muddy and damp. Her eyes, wide and large and wondering,
watched him, and asked him the ultimate question.
‘I came—because I must,’ he said. ‘Why do you ask?’
She looked at him in doubt and wonder.

510 Women in Love