Her next words, to explain her tears, were barely audible.

“I thought never to see you again.”

He could not tell her how close she had come to his own truth. She looked up at him and he as quickly looked down. Those same mysterious syncopal symptoms as in the barn swept over him. His heart raced, his hand trembled. He knew if he looked into those eyes he was lost. As if to ban them, he shut his own.

The silence was terrible then, as tense as a bridge about to break, a tower to fall; unendurable in its emotion, its truth bursting to be spoken. Then suddenly there was a little cascade of coals from the fire. Most fell inside the low guard, but one or two bounced off and onto the edge of the blanket that covered Sarah’s legs. She jerked it hastily away as Charles knelt quickly and seized the small shovel from the brass bucket. The coals on the carpet were quickly replaced. But the blanket smoldered. He snatched it away from her and throwing it on the ground hastily stamped out the sparks. A smell of singed wool filled the room. One of Sarah’s legs still rested on the stool, but she had put the other to the ground. Both feet were bare. He looked down at the blanket, made sure with one or two slaps of his hand that it no longer smoldered, then turned and placed it across her legs once more. He was bent close, his eyes on the arranging. And then, as if by an instinctive gesture, yet one she half dared to calculate, her hand reached shyly out and rested on his. He knew she was looking up at him. He could not move his hand, and suddenly he could not keep his eyes from hers.

There was gratitude in them, and all the old sadness, and a strange concern, as if she knew she was hurting him; but above all she was waiting. Infinitely timid, yet waiting. If there had been the faintest smile on her lips, perhaps he would have remembered Dr. Grogan’s theory; but this was a face that seemed almost self-surprised, as lost as himself. How long they looked into each other’s eyes he did not know. It seemed an eternity, though in reality it was no more than three or four seconds. Their hands acted first. By some mysterious communion, the fingers interlaced. Then Charles fell on one knee and strained her passionately to him. Their mouths met with a wild violence that shocked both; made her avert her lips. He covered her cheeks, her eyes, with kisses. His hand at last touched that hair, caressed it, felt the small head through its softness, as the thin-clad body was felt against his arms and breast. Suddenly he buried his face in her neck.

“We must not… we must not… this is madness.” But her arms came round him and pressed his head closer. He did not move. He felt borne on wings of fire, hurtling, but in such tender air, like a child at last let free from school, a prisoner in a green field, a hawk rising. He raised his head and looked at her: an almost savage fierceness. Then they kissed again. But he pressed against her with such force that the chair rolled back a little. He felt her flinch with pain as the bandaged foot fell from the stool. He looked back to it, then at her face, her closed eyes. She turned her head away against the back of the chair, almost as if he repelled her; but her bosom seemed to arch imperceptibly towards him and her hands gripped his convulsively. He glanced at the door behind her; then stood and in two strides was at it.

The bedroom was not lit except by the dusk light and the faint street lamps opposite. But he saw the gray bed, the washstand. Sarah stood awkwardly from the chair, supporting herself against its back, the injured foot lifted from the ground, one end of the shawl fallen from her shoulders. Each reflected the intensity in each other’s eyes, the flood, the being swept before it. She seemed to half step, half fall towards him. He sprang forward and caught her in his arms and embraced her. The shawl fell. No more than a layer of flannel lay between him and her nakedness. He strained that body into his, straining his mouth upon hers, with all the hunger of a long frustration—not merely sexual, for a whole ungovernable torrent of things banned, romance, adventure, sin, madness, animality, all these coursed wildly through him.

Her head lay back in his arms, as if she had fainted, when he finally raised his lips from her mouth. He swept her up and carried her through to the bedroom. She lay where he threw her across the bed, half swooned, one arm flung back. He seized her other hand and kissed it feverishly; it caressed his face. He pulled himself away and ran back into the other room. He began to undress wildly, tearing off his clothes as if someone was drowning and he was on the bank. A button from his frock coat flew off and rolled into a corner, but he did not even look to see where it went. His waistcoat was torn off, his boots, his socks, his trousers and undertrousers… his pearl tie pin, his cravat. He cast a glance at the outer door, and went to twist the key in its lock. Then, wearing only his long-tailed shirt, he went barelegged into the bedroom.

She had moved a little, since she now lay with her head on the pillow, though still on top of the bed, her face twisted sideways and hidden from his sight by a dark fan of hair. He stood over her a moment, his member erect and thrusting out his shirt. Then he raised his left knee onto the narrow bed and fell on her, raining burning kisses on her mouth, her eyes, her throat. But the passive yet acquiescent body pressed beneath him, the naked feet that touched his own… he could not wait. Raising himself a little, he drew up her nightgown. Her legs parted. With a frantic brutality, as he felt his ejaculation about to burst, he found the place and thrust. Her body flinched again, as it had when her foot fell from the stool. He conquered that instinctive constriction, and her arms flung round him as if she would bind him to her for that eternity he could not dream without her. He began to ejaculate at once.

“Oh my dearest. My dearest. My sweetest angel… Sarah, Sarah… oh Sarah.”

A few moments later he lay still. Precisely ninety seconds had passed since he had left her to look into the bedroom.

Silence.

They lay as if paralyzed by what they had done. Congealed in sin, frozen with delight. Charles—no gentle postcoital sadness for him, but an immediate and universal horror—was like a city struck out of a quiet sky by an atom bomb. All lay razed; all principle, all future, all faith, all honorable intent. Yet he survived, he lay in the sweetest possession of his life, the last man alive, infinitely isolated… but already the radioactivity of guilt crept, crept through his nerves and veins. In the distant shadows Ernestina stood and stared mournfully at him. Mr. Freeman struck him across the face… how stone they were, rightly implacable, immovably waiting.

He shifted a little to relieve Sarah of his weight, then turned on his back so that she could lie against him, her head on his shoulder. He stared up at the ceiling. What a mess, what an inutterable mess!

And he held her a little closer. Her hand reached timidly and embraced his. The rain stopped. Heavy footsteps, slow, measured, passed somewhere beneath the window. A police officer, perhaps. The Law.

Charles said, “I am worse than Varguennes.” Her only answer was to press his hand, as if to deny and hush him. But he was a man.

“What is to become of us?”

“I cannot think beyond this hour.”