“There she is!” he cried, breaking into a run.
There was a faint rattling noise. Away to the right the train, like a luminous caterpillar, was threading across the night. The rattling ceased.
“She's over the viaduct. You'll just do it.”
Clara ran, quite out of breath, and fell at last into the train. The whistle blew. He was gone. Gone!—and she was in a carriage full of people. She felt the cruelty of it.
He turned round and plunged home. Before he knew where he was he was in the kitchen at home. He was very pale. His eyes were dark and dangerous-looking, as if he were drunk. His mother looked at him.
“Well, I must say your boots are in a nice state!” she said.
He looked at his feet. Then he took off his overcoat. His mother wondered if he were drunk.
“She caught the train then?” she said.
“Yes.”
“I hope HER feet weren't so filthy. Where on earth you dragged her I don't know!”
He was silent and motionless for some time.
“Did you like her?” he asked grudgingly at last.
“Yes, I liked her. But you'll tire of her, my son; you know you will.”
He did not answer. She noticed how he laboured in his breathing.
“Have you been running?” she asked.
“We had to run for the train.”
“You'll go and knock yourself up. You'd better drink hot milk.”
It was as good a stimulant as he could have, but he refused and went to bed. There he lay face down on the counterpane, and shed tears of rage and pain. There was a physical pain that made him bite his lips till they bled, and the chaos inside him left him unable to think, almost to feel.
“This is how she serves me, is it?” he said in his heart, over and over, pressing his face in the quilt. And he hated her. Again he went over the scene, and again he hated her.
The next day there was a new aloofness about him. Clara was very gentle, almost loving. But he treated her distantly, with a touch of contempt. She sighed, continuing to be gentle. He came round.
One evening of that week Sarah Bernhardt was at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham, giving “La Dame aux Camelias”. Paul wanted to see this old and famous actress, and he asked Clara to accompany him. He told his mother to leave the key in the window for him.
“Shall I book seats?” he asked of Clara.
“Yes. And put on an evening suit, will you? I've never seen you in it.”
“But, good Lord, Clara! Think of ME in evening suit at the theatre!” he remonstrated.
“Would you rather not?” she asked.
“I will if you WANT me to; but I s'll feel a fool.”
She laughed at him.
“Then feel a fool for my sake, once, won't you?”
The request made his blood flush up.
“I suppose I s'll have to.”
“What are you taking a suitcase for?” his mother asked.
He blushed furiously.
“Clara asked me,” he said.
“And what seats are you going in?”
“Circle—three-and-six each!”
“Well, I'm sure!” exclaimed his mother sarcastically.
“It's only once in the bluest of blue moons,” he said.
He dressed at Jordan's, put on an overcoat and a cap, and met Clara in a cafe. She was with one of her suffragette friends. She wore an old long coat, which did not suit her, and had a little wrap over her head, which he hated. The three went to the theatre together.
Clara took off her coat on the stairs, and he discovered she was in a sort of semi-evening dress, that left her arms and neck and part of her breast bare. Her hair was done fashionably. The dress, a simple thing of green crape, suited her. She looked quite grand, he thought. He could see her figure inside the frock, as if that were wrapped closely round her. The firmness and the softness of her upright body could almost be felt as he looked at her. He clenched his fists.
And he was to sit all the evening beside her beautiful naked arm, watching the strong throat rise from the strong chest, watching the breasts under the green stuff, the curve of her limbs in the tight dress. Something in him hated her again for submitting him to this torture of nearness. And he loved her as she balanced her head and stared straight in front of her, pouting, wistful, immobile, as if she yielded herself to her fate because it was too strong for her. She could not help herself; she was in the grip of something bigger than herself. A kind of eternal look about her, as if she were a wistful sphinx, made it necessary for him to kiss her. He dropped his programme, and crouched down on the floor to get it, so that he could kiss her hand and wrist. Her beauty was a torture to him. She sat immobile. Only, when the lights went down, she sank a little against him, and he caressed her hand and arm with his fingers. He could smell her faint perfume. All the time his blood kept sweeping up in great white-hot waves that killed his consciousness momentarily.
The drama continued. He saw it all in the distance, going on somewhere; he did not know where, but it seemed far away inside him. He was Clara's white heavy arms, her throat, her moving bosom. That seemed to be himself. Then away somewhere the play went on, and he was identified with that also. There was no himself. The grey and black eyes of Clara, her bosom coming down on him, her arm that he held gripped between his hands, were all that existed. Then he felt himself small and helpless, her towering in her force above him.
Only the intervals, when the lights came up, hurt him expressibly. He wanted to run anywhere, so long as it would be dark again. In a maze, he wandered out for a drink. Then the lights were out, and the strange, insane reality of Clara and the drama took hold of him again.
The play went on. But he was obsessed by the desire to kiss the tiny blue vein that nestled in the bend of her arm. He could feel it. His whole face seemed suspended till he had put his lips there. It must be done. And the other people! At last he bent quickly forward and touched it with his lips. His moustache brushed the sensitive flesh. Clara shivered, drew away her arm.
When all was over, the lights up, the people clapping, he came to himself and looked at his watch. His train was gone.
“I s'll have to walk home!” he said.
Clara looked at him.
“It is too late?” she asked.
He nodded. Then he helped her on with her coat.
“I love you! You look beautiful in that dress,” he murmured over her shoulder, among the throng of bustling people.
She remained quiet. Together they went out of the theatre. He saw the cabs waiting, the people passing. It seemed he met a pair of brown eyes which hated him. But he did not know. He and Clara turned away, mechanically taking the direction to the station.
The train had gone. He would have to walk the ten miles home.
“It doesn't matter,” he said. “I shall enjoy it.”
“Won't you,” she said, flushing, “come home for the night? I can sleep with mother.”
He looked at her. Their eyes met.
“What will your mother say?” he asked.
“She won't mind.”
“You're sure?”
“Quite!”
“SHALL I come?”
“If