He would
have liked that walk to last for ever, for the pure pleasure of
following, now the delicate poise of her head, now the faint ripple of
her shoulders under her thin coat, now the lines of her skirt breaking
and flowing with the almost imperceptible swinging of her hips.
Her beauty, as he now reflected, was of the sort that dwells less in
the parts than in the whole, it was subtle, pervading, and profound.
It rejected all but the finer elements of sex. In those light
vanishing curves her womanhood was more suggested than defined; it
dawned on him in tender adumbration rather than in light. Such beauty
is eloquent and prophetic through its richness of association, its
kindred with all forms of loveliness. As Lucia moved she parted with
some of that remoter quality that had first fascinated, then estranged
him; she took on the grace of the creatures that live free in the
sunlight and in the open air.
The mist shut them in with its grey walls. There was nothing to be
seen but the patch of grass trodden by her feet, and her moving
figure, grey on grey.
The walk was somewhat lacking in incident and conversational openings.
Such as occurred seemed, like Kitty Palliser's hat, to be packed with
meaning. There was the moment, the dreadful moment, when he lagged
behind and lost sight of her. The moment, his opportunity, when an
enormous bramble caught and pinned her by the feet and skirt. She
tried to tread on it with one foot and walk away from it with the
other, a thing manifestly impossible and absurd.
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