Page:The Trespasser, Lawrence, 1912.djvu/213

Rh interruption answered: “Well, I’ve got to go through it.”

His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he forgot when he awoke. Only this naïve question and answer betrayed what had taken place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinate knowledge vanished.

Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmund did was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The second thing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight. “What would it just be like now?” said he to himself. He had to give his heart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his sleep activity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had been his during the last mornings. He pictured the garden with roses and nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all the expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs.

“It is impossible it is gone!” he cried to himself. “It can’t be gone. I looked forward to it as if it never would come. It can’t be gone now. Helena is not lost to me, surely.” Then he began a long pining for the departed beauty of his life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet by facet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. This pain, though it was keen, was half pleasure.

Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the room next to his, and he heard her:

“Frank, it’s a quarter to eight. You will be late.”

“All right, mother. Why didn’t you call me sooner?” grumbled the lad.