As in her spirit, so in her body, she was different; her limbs looked
freer, rounder; her breath seemed stirring her more deeply; like a
flower of early June she was opening before his very eyes. This, though
it gave him pleasure, also added to his fear. The strange silence, in
its utter naturalness--for what could he talk about with her?--brought
home to him more vividly than anything before, the barriers of class.
All he thought of was how not to be ridiculous! She was inviting him in
some strange, unconscious, subtle way to treat her as a woman, as
though in spirit she had linked her round young arms about his neck, and
through her half-closed lips were whispering the eternal call of sex to
sex. And he, a middle-aged and cultivated man, conscious of everything,
could not even speak for fear of breaking through his shell of delicacy.
He hardly breathed, disturbed to his very depths by the young figure
sitting by his side, and by the dread of showing that disturbance.

Beside the cultivated plant the self-sown poppy rears itself; round the
stem of a smooth tree the honeysuckle twines; to a trim wall the ivy
clings.

In her new-found form and purpose this girl had gained a strange, still
power; she no longer felt it mattered whether he spoke or looked at her;
her instinct, piercing through his shell, was certain of the throbbing
of his pulses, the sweet poison in his blood.

The perception of this still power, more than all else, brought fear to
Hilary. He need not speak; she would not care! He need not even look
at her; she had but to sit there silent, motionless, with the breath of
youth coming through her parted lips, and the light of youth stealing
through her half-closed eyes.