Page 472 - sons-and-lovers

asked.
‘Yes; I ought to have dropped it years back. But it would
have been no good going on. Two wrongs don’t make a
right.’
‘How old ARE you?’ Clara asked.
‘Twenty-five.’
‘And I am thirty,’ she said.
‘I know you are.’
‘I shall be thirty-one—or AM I thirty-one?’
‘I neither know nor care. What does it matter!’
They were at the entrance to the Grove. The wet, red
track, already sticky with fallen leaves, went up the steep
bank between the grass. On either side stood the elm-trees
like pillars along a great aisle, arching over and making
high up a roof from which the dead leaves fell. All was emp-
ty and silent and wet. She stood on top of the stile, and he
held both her hands. Laughing, she looked down into his
eyes. Then she leaped. Her breast came against his; he held
her, and covered her face with kisses.
They went on up the slippery, steep red path. Presently
she released his hand and put it round her waist.
‘You press the vein in my arm, holding it so tightly,’ she
said.
They walked along. His finger-tips felt the rocking of her
breast. All was silent and deserted. On the left the red wet
plough-land showed through the doorways between the
elm-boles and their branches. On the right, looking down,
they could see the tree-tops of elms growing far beneath
them, hear occasionally the gurgle of the river. Sometimes

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