“You’re not going to be conventionally horrified, are you?”

“No.  But I think you’re muddled.  I think this is satiety, you know.”

“It’s you who are muddled, Marcella.  This is satisfaction, not satiety.  I know I’ve got all I need in you.  Body, mind and spirit.  Most of all, spirit—­and courage.”

She dropped on to the crackling ground.  He looked down at her.

“I don’t believe you know anything at all about control, Professor Kraill,” she said very quietly, so quietly that he dropped down beside her to listen as she kept her face averted.  “Do you remember, once, you said ’Women have no inhibitions’?”

“I was young.  And even now, it’s true—­” he cried.

“I’m a woman.  But I’ve never deliberately wallowed—­as you seem to have done.  Once or twice, perhaps—­I was sort of weak, or perhaps hopeful.  I thought it might be very beautiful—­”

“You were seeking, as I was,” he said, suddenly gentle.

“And—­it meant softness, being bowled over, loss of control and finally cynicism,” she said.

“No, no.  Not finally cynicism, Marcella.  Cynicism half-way along, if you like.  But finally—­anchoring.”

She looked at him, very slowly, all over:  her hands were quite still on her blue print frock that smelt of fire:  many and many a night and day of hard schooling and cold patience had gone to make them lie there so untremulous now.  She reflected on that for a moment; she reflected that, in years to come, by enduring hardness, people would be able to school their hearts from beating the swift blood to a whirlpool, their lips from hungering for a kiss.  She thought next of Aunt Janet, desiccated, uncaring, and knew that Aunt Janet’s way of life was wrong because it shirked rather than faced things.  Her long gaze had reached his beautiful eyes and stayed there; she seemed to see down into a thousand years, a thousand lives.  She knew quite well that here was the place of dreams come true; here was the deliverer with whom she had thought to ride to battle, and he too had dreamed.  He saw her armour.  He did not see the chinks in it.  And he never should.  And—­he had said women had no inhibitions!

“It’s hard,” she said, her eyes still resting on his, “to keep your thoughts brave as well as your actions, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean, Marcella?”

She was sitting motionless and white; he thought he had never seen a live thing so still, so impassive.  As she watched his lips, and heard his voice speak her name, blazing floods of weakness were pouring over her.

“There are things one mustn’t do,” she said slowly.  “But they would be most beautiful to think about, right deep down and quiet inside—­like Mary had to hide and ponder in her heart the things the angel told her.  One mustn’t.  I mustn’t even think about you—­that way—­”

“What?  What do you mean?”