d see him grey, twilit and
mysterious; or looming, darker than dark, on black nights without moon
or stars.

They loved the clear nights when their bodies showed to each other white
under the white moon; they loved the dark nights that brought them
close, shutting them in, annihilating every sensation but that of his
tense, hard muscles pressing down, of her body crushed and yielding,
tightening and slackening in surrender; of their brains swimming in
their dark ecstasy.

They loved the warmth of each other's bodies in the hot windless nights;
they loved their smooth, clean coolness washed by the night wind.
Nothing, not even the sweet, haunting ghost of Maisie, came between.
They would fall asleep in each other's arms and lie there till dawn,
till Anne woke in a sudden fright. Always she had this fear that some
day they would sleep on into the morning, when the farm people would be
up and about. Jerrold lay still, tired out with satisfaction, sunk under
all the floors of sleep. She had to drag him up, with kisses first and
light stroking, then with a strong undoing of their embrace, pushing
back his heavy arms that fell again to her breast as she parted them.
Then she would wrench herself loose and shake him by the shoulders till
she woke him. He woke clean, with no ugly turning and yawning, but with
a great stretching of his strong body and a short, sudden laugh, the
laugh he had for danger. Then he would look at his wrist watch and show
it her, laughing again as she saw that this time, again, they were safe.
And they would lie a little while longer, looking into each other's
faces for the sheer joy of looking, reckless with impunity. And he would
start up suddenly with, "I say, Anne, I must clear out or we shall be
caught." And they would get up.

Outside, the world looked young and unknown in the June dawn, in the
still, clear, gold-crystal air, where green leaves and green grass shone
with a strange, hard lustre like fresh paint, and yet unearthly,
uncreated, fixed in their own space and time.

And she would go with him, her naked feet shining white on the queer,
bright, cold green of the grass, up the field to the belt of firs that
stood up, strange and eternal, under the risen sun.

They parted there, holding each other for a last kiss, a last clinging,
as if never in this world they would meet again.

Dawn after dawn. They belonged to the dawn and the dawn light; the dawn
was their day; they knew it as th