She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it
had been a snake's. She had stretched one arm so high above her
coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above
the sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her eyelids hung
heavy over their pupils. The brim-fulness of her nature breathed
from her. It was a moment when a woman's soul is more incarnate than
at any other time; when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself
flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation.
Then those eyes flashed brightly through their filmy heaviness,
before the remainder of her face was well awake. With an oddly
compounded look of gladness, shyness, and surprise, she exclaimed--"O
Mr Clare! How you frightened me--I--"
There had not at first been time for her to think of the changed
relations which his declaration had introduced; but the full sense of
the matter rose up in her face when she encountered Clare's tender
look as he stepped forward to the bottom stair.
"Dear, darling Tessy!" he whispered, putting his arm round her, and
his face to her flushed cheek. "Don't, for Heaven's sake, Mister me
any more. I have hastened back so soon because of you!"
Tess's excitable heart beat against his by way of reply; and there
they stood upon the red-brick floor of the entry, the sun slanting in
by the 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.
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