Free Warleggan by Winston Graham Page B

’
    'Tell me.'
    'I don't know what I feel for you - there that's the truth;, Now go away.'
    She got to her feet and moved a step towards her horse, but he jumped up and barred her way. `You must tell me, Caroline'
    She flared at him, but he caught her wrist and held it. She sai d: Well, you should know without being told. I wondered what it would be like to be kissed by you, whether I should like it or hate it, whether it would feed or kill my interest in you. But I didn't know and I haven't known and I shan't ever know - and now it does not matter, because I'm going away.. Oh, there have been other men who've atttacted and plenty more who will ! But I shall not marry the first of them nor the second. In October-'
    But she said no more. He put his hands on her elbows and pulled her, against him and kissed her on the cheek and then on the mouth. After a moment her hands gripped his shoulders tight, not pulling him closer but slightly pushing him away, as a woman will whose critical mind is aware that she has got only what she asked for. They stood there so long that a chaffinch fluttered down and stayed pecking at the grass until one of the horses shuffled-and frightened it off.
    At last, a flight of rooks cawing and settling in the trees separated them. There was a curious strained silence when they broke. Dwight was out of breath an d he thought Caroline was too.
    He said : 'And now no doubt you hate me.' 'No doubt I hate you.'
    `And will be glad to go, cured of your curiosity. ’
    'You'd best,' she said, `you'd best - help me on my horse - if we're to get back.'
    He moved to bend to make a step for her foot, but at the first contact of her skirt he straightened and she was in his arms again. They reeled against the horse, which shied and whinnied; a tree came up against them, and she leaned her back agains t it as he kissed her again, mor e deliberately this time.
    Already the sun was, higher than it, should have been. This time he really helped her to mount, and then he climbed up on to his own horse, and the soft morning breeze wafted on their faces.
    Their horses were ready to move off, but neither of the riders made any sign:
    `When will you be back?' said Dwight - When I choose'
    `You'll write?'
    'If you wish me to.'
    He made a gesture of hopelessness. Did she want reassurance of that? 'If you come back .. he began. -
    'It will be the same over again? But in October there will, be one change.'
    'What is it?'
    `I shall be twenty-one. Uncle Ray can do, nothing to prevent me from returning to this district after October the twenty - sixth.'
    They moved off slowly out of the, glade, and nothing was left but some hoof prints and a few broken bluebells to mark the emotion which had flared there.

Chapter Six
    The fine weath er did not last, and June ended wet, to be fol lowed by a wetter July and August. The rain beat upon the crops endlessly, flattened them, and, turned t hem black. High winds swept the country, and the sun drifted pale and lost across, the sky among the intermittent storms.
    In the cobbled s treets of Paris new and strange terrors stalked. The eruption which had cracked the surface of the continental despotisms had suddenly fester ed and turned in upon, itself. Hopelessly menaced from the east, tottering to its fall, it was pulling down upon itself the whole structure of civilised society. In this last phase of felo-de-se no infamy was too bad. News of the butchery of three hundred priests was followed, by stories of children playing with heads and four days' con tinuous slaughter or the packed prisons. Men whispered of the Princess Lamballe torn limb from limb, her head stuck on a pike, judgment pronounced by the mob and those found gu ilty cut obscenely into pieces on the spot among th e corpses, already piled; the prisons no sooner empty than filled again.
    Mr. Trencrom, keeping up his illicit traffic in spite of politics and the weather, reported that Mark Daniel was no longer in Cherbourg but had