He rose and took her hand, and they began moving away from the log.

“Wait! I’ll leave a signal for that little rascal,” he said, putting his stick and his cloth-cap by the side of the cream-coloured hat. But he did not give up her hand; and together they walked carelessly and aimlessly across that wide field, taking a course at right angles to the course taken by her brother. Wolf had hitherto, in his attitude to the girls he had approached, been dominated by an impersonal lust; but what he now felt stealing over him like a sweet, insidious essence, was the actual, inmost identity of this young human animal. And the strange thing was that this conscious presence, this deep-breathing Gerda, moving silently beside him under her cloak, under her olive-green frock, under everything she wore, was not just a girl, not just a white, flexible body, with lovely breasts, slender hips, and a gallant swinging stride, but a living conscious soul, different in its entire being from his own identity.