A new understanding dawned into her face.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘there’s that.’

‘We must get out,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing for it but to get out, quick.’

She looked at him doubtfully across the table.

‘But where?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We’ll just wander about for a bit.’

Again she looked at him quizzically.

‘I should be perfectly happy at the Mill,’ she said.

‘It’s very near the old thing,’ he said. ‘Let us wander a bit.’

His voice could be so soft and happy–go–lucky, it went through her veins like an exhilaration. Nevertheless she dreamed of a valley, and wild gardens, and peace. She had a desire too for splendour—an aristocratic extravagant splendour. Wandering seemed to her like restlessness, dissatisfaction.

‘Where will you wander to?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. I feel as if I would just meet you and we’d set off—just towards the distance.’

‘But where can one go?’ she asked anxiously. ‘After all, there is only the world, and none of it is very distant.’

‘Still,’ he said, ‘I should like to go with you—nowhere. It would be rather wandering just to nowhere. That’s the place to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.’

Still she meditated.

‘You see, my love,’ she said, ‘I’m so afraid that while we are only people, we’ve got to take the world that’s given—because there isn’t any other.’

‘Yes there is,’ he said. ‘There’s somewhere where we can be free—somewhere where one needn’t wear much clothes—none even—where one meets a few people who have gone through enough, and can take things for granted—where you be yourself, without bothering. There is somewhere—there are one or two people—’

‘But where—?’ she sighed.

‘Somewhere—anywhere. Let’s wander off. That’s the thing to do—let’s wander off.’

‘Yes—’ she said, thrilled at the thought of travel. But to her it was only travel.

‘To be free,’ he said. ‘To be free, in a free place, with a few other people!’

‘Yes,’ she said wistfully. Those ‘few other people’ depressed her.

‘It isn’t really a locality, though,’ he said. ‘It’s a perfected relation between you and me, and others—the perfect relation—so that we are free together.’

‘It is, my love, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘It’s you and me. It’s you and me, isn’t it?’ She stretched out her arms to him. He went across and stooped to kiss her face. Her arms closed round him again, her hands spread upon his shoulders, moving slowly there, moving slowly on his back, down his back slowly, with a strange recurrent, rhythmic motion, yet moving slowly down, pressing mysteriously over his loins, over his flanks. The sense of the awfulness of riches that could never be impaired flooded her mind like a swoon, a death in most marvellous possession, mystic–sure. She possessed him so utterly and intolerably, that she herself lapsed out. And yet she was only sitting still in the chair, with her hands pressed upon him, and lost.