They argued concerning the way. Siegmund, as usual, submitted to her.
They went quite wrong. As they retraced their steps, stealthily, through
a poultry farm whose fowls were standing in forlorn groups, once more
dismayed by evening, Helena's pride battled with her new subjugation to
Siegmund. She walked head down, saying nothing. He also was silent, but
his heart was strong in him. Somewhere in the distance a band was
playing 'The Watch on the Rhine'.

As they passed the beeches and were near home, Helena said, to try him,
and to strike a last blow for her pride: 'I wonder what next Monday will bring us.' 'Quick curtain,' he answered joyously. He was looking down and smiling
at her with such careless happiness that she loved him. He was wonderful
to her. She loved him, was jealous of every particle of him that evaded
her. She wanted to sacrifice to him, make herself a burning altar to
him, and she wanted to possess him.

The hours that would be purely their own came too slowly for her.

That night she met his passion with love. It was not his passion she
wanted, actually. But she desired that he should want _her_ madly, and
that he should have all--everything. It was a wonderful night to him. It
restored in him the full 'will to live'. But she felt it destroyed her.
Her soul seemed blasted.

At seven o'clock in the morning Helena lay in the deliciously cool
water, while small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless,
continuing perfectly in their flicker the rhythm of the night's passion.
Nothing, she felt, had ever been so delightful as this cool water
running over her. She lay and looked out on the shining sea. All things,
it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less soiled. The cliffs rose
out of the shining waves like clouds of strong, fine texture, and rocks
along the shore were the dapplings of a bright dawn. The coarseness was
fused out of the world, so that sunlight showed in the veins of the
morning cliffs and the rocks. Yea, everything ran with sunshine, as we
are full of blood, and plants are tissued from green-gold, glistening
sap. Substance and solidity were shadows that the morning cast round
itself to make itself tangible: as she herself was a shadow, cast by
that fragment of sunshine, her soul, over its inefficiency.