Page:The Trespasser, Lawrence, 1912.djvu/194

186 managed to keep himself. Their meetings would then be occasional and clandestine. Ah, it was intolerable!

“If I were rich,” said Siegmund, “all would be plain. I would give each of my children enough, and Beatrice, and we would go away; but I am nearly forty; I have no genius; I shall never be rich.” Round and round went his thoughts like oxen over a threshing floor, treading out the grain. Gradually the chaff flew away; gradually the corn of conviction gathered small and hard upon the floor.

As he sat thinking, Helena leaned across to him, and laid her hand on his knee.

“If I have made things more difficult,” she said, her voice harsh with pain, “you will forgive me.”

He started. This was one of the cruel cuts of pain that love gives, filling the eyes with blood. Siegmund stiffened himself; slowly he smiled, as he looked at her childish, plaintive lips, and her large eyes haunted with pain.

“Forgive you?” he repeated. “Forgive you for five days of perfect happiness; the only real happiness I have ever known!”

Helena tightened her fingers on his knee. She felt herself stinging with painful joy; but one of the ladies was looking at her curiously. She leaned back in her place, and turned to watch the shocks of corn strike swiftly, in long rows, across her vision.

Siegmund, also quivering, turned his face to the window, where the rotation of the wide sea-flat helped the movement of his thought. Helena had