window upon his back, as he held her tightly to his breast; upon her inclining face, upon the blue veins of her temple, upon her naked arm, and her neck, and into the depths of her hair. Having been lying down in her clothes she was warm as a sunned cat. At first she would not look straight up at him, but her eyes soon lifted, and his plumbed the deepness of the ever-varying pupils, with their radiating fibrils of blue, and black, and gray, and violet, while she regarded him as Eve at her second waking might have regarded Adam.
“I’ve got to go a-skimming,” she pleaded, “and I have on’y old Deb to help me today. Mrs. Crick is gone to market with Mr. Crick, and Retty is not well, and the others are gone out somewhere, and won’t be home till milking.”
As they retreated to the milk-house Deborah Fyander appeared on the stairs.
“I have come back, Deborah,” said Mr. Clare, upwards. “So I can help Tess with the skimming; and, as you are very tired, I am sure, you needn’t come down till milking-time.”
Possibly the Talbothays milk was not very thoroughly skimmed that afternoon. Tess was in a dream wherein familiar objects appeared as having light and shade and position, but no particular outline. Every time she held the skimmer under the pump to cool it for the work her hand trembled, the ardour of his affection being so palpable that she seemed to flinch under it like a plant in too burning a sun.
Then he pressed her again to his side, and when she had done running her forefinger round the leads to cut off the cream-edge, he cleaned it in nature’s way; for the unconstrained manners of Talbothays dairy came convenient now.
“I may as well say it now as later, dearest,” he resumed gently. “I wish to ask you something of a very practical nature, which I have been thinking