His words were like touches, and they distressed her into movement, into a desire to run from him. "I'm going in," she said. "Not yet." "I must." He was hovering on the edge of sentences which had their risk: she could feel that he wished to claim her but dared not, lest she should refuse his claim. He found a miserable kind of safety in staying on the brink, yet he made one venture. "There are things we've got to talk about." "But not tonight." "You'll say that every night." "There's never really any need to talk about anything," she said. He stammered, "But--you're going to marry me. I must make--make arrangements." She had her first real scorn of him. He was afraid of her, and she despised him for it, yet she saw that she must keep him so. She could hardly bring herself to say, "Do what you like," but having said it, she could add, with vehemence, "Don't bother me! I'm busy." "But--" he said, and looked down: and now she seemed to be caught in his shame, a partner, and she had to wait for what he tried to say. He looked up, saying, "You promised." "Oh, I know." She did not go. Perhaps people lying side by side in their graves would talk to each other like this, in voices muffled by their coffins and inarticulate because of fleshless lips, with words that had no meaning now that life, which made them, was done. And again she felt that she and George were moles, burrowing in the earth, scratching, groping for something blindly. She brought her hands together and shook them. "If only one could see!" she said aloud. "What is it?" "I feel as if I'm in a dark room." "It's a dark night," he said, and touched her wrist. "When shall I see you again? Tomorrow?" "You can't see me now." "I can. Your hair has drops on it, and your face--" "No!" she cried. "Don't tell me. Don't come with me." She ran from him at last, and he did not follow her. Like her, he was bewildered, but for him she was a light he could not put out: for her he was the symbol of that darkness which had fallen on life. CHAPTER XXVIII The next day had its own bewilderment and confusion, and Helen learnt that high tragedy is not blackest gloom but a thing patched and streaked with painful brightness, and she found herself capable of a gaiety which made Miriam doubly reproachful. "You've never been like this before," she said, "and we might have had such fun. And you shouldn't be like it now, when I'm going away tomorrow." She sat in her empty box, with her legs dangling over the side. "I'm not sure that I shall go." "You've only two pairs of stockings without holes in them," Helen said. She was kneeling before Miriam's chest of drawers. "Doesn't matter. I shall have to buy heaps of things. D'you know, I'm afraid he's going to be strict." "Poor little man!"