Page 548 - sons-and-lovers

morning. Why does she absorb me?’
The morning was altogether uninterrupted: she was
gone in the water. Far and wide the beach, the sandhills
with their blue marrain, the shining water, glowed together
in immense, unbroken solitude.
‘What is she, after all?’ he said to himself. ‘Here’s the sea-
coast morning, big and permanent and beautiful; there is
she, fretting, always unsatisfied, and temporary as a bubble
of foam. What does she mean to me, after all? She repre-
sents something, like a bubble of foam represents the sea.
But what is she? It’s not her I care for.’
Then, startled by his own unconscious thoughts, that
seemed to speak so distinctly that all the morning could
hear, he undressed and ran quickly down the sands. She was
watching for him. Her arm flashed up to him, she heaved on
a wave, subsided, her shoulders in a pool of liquid silver. He
jumped through the breakers, and in a moment her hand
was on his shoulder.
He was a poor swimmer, and could not stay long in the
water. She played round him in triumph, sporting with her
superiority, which he begrudged her. The sunshine stood
deep and fine on the water. They laughed in the sea for a
minute or two, then raced each other back to the sandhills.
When they were drying themselves, panting heavily, he
watched her laughing, breathless face, her bright shoulders,
her breasts that swayed and made him frightened as she
rubbed them, and he thought again:
‘But she is magnificent, and even bigger than the morn-
ing and the sea. Is she—-? Is she—-‘