Not, that is, to interpret out to the end of all its logical
implications, the admission he had so unconsciously made to her that
morning.

She had never seriously been hurt or frightened, Portia had said weeks
ago. And when she said it, it was true. She was both hurt and frightened
now, and the instinct that had urged her to fly was as simple and
primitive as that which urges a wounded animal to hide.

Indeed, if you could have seen her after she had swung her paddle
inboard, sitting there, gripping the gunwales with both hands, panting,
her wide eyes dry, you might easily have thought of some defenseless
wild thing cowering in a momentary shelter, listening for the baying of
pursuing hounds.

He didn't love her any more, that was what he had said. For what was the
thing he had so cheerfully described himself as cured of, what were the
symptoms he had enumerated as if he had been talking about a
disease--the obsession with her, the inability to get her further away
than the middle ground of his thoughts, and then only temporarily; the
necessity of saying everything he said and doing everything he did, with
reference to her; the fact that his mind could focus itself sharply on
nothing in the world but just herself?--What was all that but the
veritable description, though in hostile terms, of the love he had
promised to feel for her till death should--part them; of the very love
she felt for him, this moment stronger than ever?

Recurrent waves of the panic broke over her, during which she would
catch up her paddle again and drive ahead, blindly, without any
conscious knowledge of where she was going. And in the intervals, she