How could she let him know? How dare she? As she stumbled away over the shingle she heard her breath rasping in her throat and before she could do anything about it she was torn by a burst of sobbing, and she flung herself to the ground and cried, with great gusts of tears shaking their way out of her into the flying darkness.She could not say “You are the one,” she could not tell him, because the whole balance of her life was tilted against finding him. To come upon him so suddenly put her in a dangerous position from which she could only escape by trying to deny that he existed. Oh! Everything she had told him was true! And now this casual stranger – was he casual? Perhaps not; he seemed as intent as she was, and his eyes went as far as she would go, and further, into the darkness – had plunged her again into the whirlpool which generated, it seemed to her, the seeds and forms of everything she was not. So; was it love she felt? But what else could it be? Well, if it was, love was a cold thing, as sharp and in different as a flailing sword, and now it had cut her again.She lay still and exhausted on the shingle.
