Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/422

414 and irascible. But you have clothed over the sensitiveness of yours, haven’t you?—like naked life, naked defenceless protoplasm they were, is it not so?”

She laughed, and at the old painful memories she dilated in the old way, and I felt the old tremor at seeing her soul flung quivering on my pity.

“And were mine like that?” asked George, who had come up.

He must have perceived the bewilderment of my look as I tried to adjust myself to him. A slight shadow, a slight chagrin appeared on his face.

“Yes,” I answered, “yes—but not so bad. You never gave yourself away so much—you were most cautious: but just as defenceless.”

“And am I altered?” he asked, with quiet irony, as if he knew I was not interested in him.

“Yes, more cautious. You keep in the shadow. But Emily has clothed herself, and can now walk among the crowd at her own gait.”

It was with an effort I refrained from putting my lips to kiss her at that moment as she looked at me with womanly dignity and tenderness. Then I remembered, and said:

“But you are taking me to the stable George! Come and see the horses too, Emily.”

“I will. I admire them so much,” she replied, and thus we both indulged him.

He talked to his horses and of them, laying his hand upon them, running over their limbs. The glossy, restless animals interested him more than anything. He broke into a little flush of enthusiasm over them. They were his new interest. They were