He stepped back lest
she should be going to pass him, but she turned the other way, walking
quickly, with a small bag in her hand.
'She's going away,' Charles said to himself with perspicacity, and now
for the first time he knew what her absence would mean to him. She did
not love him, she mocked and despised him, but the Malletts' house had
held her, and several times a day he had been able to pass and tell
himself she was there. Now, with the sad little bag in her hand, she
was not only in personal danger, she threatened his whole life.
He followed, not too close. Her haste did not destroy the beauty of
her carriage, her body did not hang over her feet, teaching them the
way to go; it was straight, like a young tree. He had never really
looked at her before, he had never had a mind empty of everything
except the consideration of her, and now he was puzzled by some
difference. In his desire to discover what it was, he drew
indiscreetly close to her, and though a quick turn of her head
reminded him of his duty to see and not to be seen, he had made his
discovery. Her clothes were different: they were shabby and, searching
for an explanation, he found the right one. She was wearing the
clothes in which she had arrived at Nelson Lodge. He remembered. In
books it was what fugitives always did: they discarded their rich
clothes and they left a note on the pin-cushion. It was her way of
shaking the dust from her feet and, with a rush of feeling in which he
forgot himself, he experienced a new, protective tenderness for her.
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