`What's the matter?' he said again, when she was quieter.But she only pressed her face further into his shoulder, in pain, like a child that cannot tell.
`What is it, then?' he asked.Suddenly she broke away, wiped her eyes, regained her composure, and went and sat in a chair.
`Father hit me,' she announced, sitting bunched up, rather like a ruffled bird, her eyes very bright.
`What for?' he said.
She looked away, and would not answer.There was a pitiful redness about her sensitive nostrils, and her quivering lips.
`Why?' he repeated, in his strange, soft, penetrating voice.
She looked round at him, rather defiantly.
`Because I said I was going to be married tomorrow, and he bullied me.'
`Why did he bully you?'
Her mouth dropped again, she remembered the scene once more, the tears came up.
`Because I said he didn't care -- and he doesn't, it's only his domineeringness that's hurt --' she said, her mouth pulled awry by her weeping, all the time she spoke, so that he almost smiled, it seemed so childish.Yet it was not childish, it was a mortal conflict, a deep wound.
`It isn't quite true,' he said.`And even so, you shouldn't say it.'
`It is true -- it is true,' she wept, `and I won't be bullied by his pretending it's love -- when it isn't -- he doesn't care, how can he -- no, he can't--'
He sat in silence.She moved him beyond himself.
`Then you shouldn't rouse him, if he can't,' replied Birkin quietly.
`And I have loved him, I have,' she wept.`I've loved him always, and he's always done this to me, he has --'
`It's been a love of opposition, then,' he said.`Never mind -- it will be all right.It's nothing desperate.'
`Yes,' she wept, `it is, it is.'
`Why?'
`I shall never see him again --'
`Not immediately.Don't cry, you had to break with him, it had to be -- don't cry.'
He went over to her and kissed her fine, fragile hair, touching her wet cheeks gently.
`Don't cry,' he repeated, `don't cry any more.'
He held her head close against him, very close and quiet.
At last she was still.Then she looked up, her eyes wide and frightened.
`don't you want me?' she asked.
`Want you?' His darkened, steady eyes puzzled her and did not give her play.
`Do you wish I hadn't come?' she asked, anxious now again for fear she might be out of place.
`No,' he said.`I wish there hadn't been the violence -- so much ugliness -- but perhaps it was inevitable.'
She watched him in silence.He seemed deadened.
`But where shall I stay?' she asked, feeling humiliated.
He thought for a moment.
`Here, with me,' he said.`We're married as much today as we shall be tomorrow.'
`But --'
`I'll tell Mrs Varley,' he said.`Never mind now.'
He sat looking at her.She could feel his darkened steady eyes looking at her all the time.It made her a little bit frightened.She pushed her hair off her forehead nervously.
`Do I look ugly?' she said.
And she blew her nose again.
A small smile came round his eyes.
`No,' he said, `fortunately.'
And he went across to her, and gathered her like a belonging in his arms.She was so tenderly beautiful, he could not bear to see her, he could only bear to hide her against himself.Now; washed all clean by her tears, she was new and frail like a flower just unfolded, a flower so new, so tender, so made perfect by inner light, that he could not bear to look at her, he must hide her against himself, cover his eyes against her.She had the perfect candour of creation, something translucent and ******, like a radiant, shining flower that moment unfolded in primal blessedness.
She was so new, so wonder-clear, so undimmed.And he was so old, so steeped in heavy memories.Her soul was new, undefined and glimmering with the unseen.And his soul was dark and gloomy, it had only one grain of living hope, like a grain of mustard seed.But this one living grain in him matched the perfect youth in her.
`I love you,' he whispered as he kissed her, and trembled with pure hope, like a man who is born again to a wonderful, lively hope far exceeding the bounds of death.
She could not know how much it meant to him, how much he meant by the few words.Almost childish, she wanted proof, and statement, even over-statement, for everything seemed still uncertain, unfixed to her.
But the passion of gratitude with which he received her into his soul, the extreme, unthinkable gladness of knowing himself living and fit to unite with her, he, who was so nearly dead, who was so near to being gone with the rest of his race down the slope of mechanical death, could never be understood by her.He worshipped her as age worships youth, he gloried in her, because, in his one grain of faith, he was young as she, he was her proper mate.This marriage with her was his resurrection and his life.
All this she could not know.She wanted to be made much of, to be adored.
There were infinite distances of silence between them.How could he tell her of the immanence of her beauty, that was not form, or weight, or colour, but something like a strange, golden light! How could he know himself what her beauty lay in, for him.He said `Your nose is beautiful, your chin is adorable.' But it sounded like lies, and she was disappointed, hurt.
Even when he said, whispering with truth, `I love you, I love you,' it was not the real truth.It was something beyond love, such a gladness of having surpassed oneself, of having transcended the old existence.How could he say "I" when he was something new and unknown, not himself at all? This I, this old formula of the age, was a dead letter.
In the new, superfine bliss, a peace superseding knowledge, there was no I and you, there was only the third, unrealised wonder, the wonder of existing not as oneself, but in a consummation of my being and of her being in a new one, a new, paradisal unit regained from the duality.Nor can I say `I love you,' when I have ceased to be, and you have ceased to be:
we are both caught up and transcended into a new oneness where everything is silent, because there is nothing to answer, all is perfect and at one.
