He interpreted her according to his own idea.
“Yes, he did belittle great things, didn’t he?” said Siegmund.
“Tennyson!” she exclaimed.
“Not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things,”
“I shouldn’t say so,” she declared.
“Ha-a!”
He sounded indeterminate, but was not really so.
They wandered over the downs westward, among the wind. As they followed the headland to the Needles, they felt the breeze from the wings of the sea brushing them, and heard restless, poignant voices screaming below the cliffs. Now and again a gull, like a piece of spume flung up, rose over the cliff’s edge, and sank again. Now and again, as the path dipped in a hollow, they could see the low, suspended inter-twining of the birds passing in and out of the cliff shelter.
These savage birds appealed to all the poetry and yearning in Helena. They fascinated her, they almost voiced her. She crept nearer and nearer the edge, feeling she must watch the gulls thread out in flakes of white above the weed-black rocks. Siegmund stood away back, anxiously. He would not dare to tempt Fate now, having too strong a sense of death to risk it.
“Come back, dear. Don’t go so near,” he pleaded, following as close as he might. She heard the pain and appeal in his voice. It thrilled her, and she went a little nearer. What was death to her but one of her symbols, the death of which the sagas talk—something grand, and sweeping, and dark.
Leaning forward, she could see the line of grey
