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the garden!” Oh, how she hated Miss Drew sometimes—hated her almost as much as the Ruins. And yet how good the woman had been, putting up with her moods, her sulkiness, her sheer bad temper, treating her always more like a daughter than a companion. “I hope he won't kiss me or anything else,” she thought. And then she thought, “I don't want him to take his hands away. I want him to go on like this, without a change, forever,”
    And Jonn thought, “I'm English and she's English and this is England. It's more lovely to feel her little cold breasts under * these stiff clothes, on this chilly grass, than all the Paris devices.” And without formulating the thought in words he got the impression of the old anonymous ballads writ in northern dialect and full of cold winds and cold sword-points and cold spades and cold rivers; an impression wherein the chilly green grass and the peewits' cries made woman's love into a wild, stoical, romantic thing; and yet a thing calling out for bread and bed and candlelight! “Lisette would not have the faintest shadow of the faintest notion of what I'm now feeling. England! England!” How small, how very small Mary's breasts were! Why, as he held them now they seemed like the cold cups of water-lilies, not like a woman's breasts at all! God! She wasn't a woman, this new-found Love of his. She was an undine out of Harrod's Mill-pond! Yes, this is what he had been secretly craving; so long! so long! In his foxy shifts, in his wanton driftings, in his stormy reactions against the life of a great city, in his pathetic escapes into those whitewashed villages with their orchards, barley fields, and church steeples, in his crazy, reiterated attempts to do something better than the wretchedest literary hackwork, in it all, through it all, he had been pining for a moment like this. Why, this girl was his very “other self.” What luck! What incredible luck! He could feel her consciousness as he held her like this, holding her where a woman's identity, her very soul, must surely most of all lie hid! And her inmost consciousness was exactly like his own—he knew it was—exactly like his own. “Oh, I needn't kiss you or anything, Mary,” his thoughts ran. “We've met. We're together. We've got each other now. It's all done. Once for all it's all done.”
    He moved his hands from her breasts and encircled her thin neck with all his fingers. He could feel the luxury of abandonment with which her chin sank on his knuckles and her head fell sideways. She was feeling exactly as he was feeling—only, as was right and proper, the reverse way. Oh, what magical expressions for the only things in love that really counted, were those old ballad phrases. Mary was not pretty. She was not beautiful. She had what the old ballads had. Yes, that was the thing. The best love was not lust; nor was it passion. Still less was it any ideal It was pure Romance! But pure Romance was harsh and grim and stoical and a man must be grim to embrace it. Yes, it went well with cold March wind and cold rain and long chilly grass.
    He released her neck and ran his fingers through her brown wavy hair. Mary always parted it in the middle and drew it back, each way. Mary's forehead always seemed fullest just over each temple where there were little blue veins. Her nose was rather long and very straight; but it had wide, flexible nostrils, the nostrils of an animal who goes by scent. John's restless fingers now began feeling over all her features, one by one, as if he had been a blind old man and she his unseen guide. It gave him a queer sensation, like touching the exposed belly of some delicate fish or bird, when he felt the pulses of her eyes beating under her tight-closed eyelids. He and she were both of them blind now. By God! And they both of them felt blind; and in the blind arms of chance. When he came to her full lips and her rather large mouth he hoped in his heart it would come upon her to bite his fingers. And