‘Well, what about you? Have you experienced mental struggles?’ she asked lightly.
‘More than Georges!’ he responded. ‘I thought I was an artist, but then I found out that I wasn’t. And it takes quite a struggle to admit to yourself that you’ve made that kind of mistake, don’t you see?’
‘Yes I do. It must have taken a lot of energy, too, I imagine.’
Her remark sounded a trifle snide, and she instantly regretted it. Why hint at his failure to pursue his artistic ambition if he was lacking in genius anyway? But he did not seem to have heard.
‘Do you know what I find so strange?’ he pursued. ‘That Georges and Lili knew that they were made for each other almost from the moment they first met. And then there are all those other people who have known each other for ages and think nothing of it, until one day they wake up, and then — they see the light—’
She could feel her heart beating and the blood rising to her cheeks. Keeping her head down to hide her colour, she affected deep concentration as she smoothed the folds of her riding costume with her whip.
‘Don’t you agree?’ he asked.
‘I–I don’t know,’ she stammered. ‘I have never thought about it, really.’
Neither spoke for a moment.
‘How oppressive it is here, under the trees!’ she murmured at length, blinking her eyes. ‘I can barely breathe! Let’s take this turning, shall we? It will take us back to the road, and then we can have a fine gallop to the White Hollow.’
She felt very strange — she, who never suffered from the heat, was overcome with a sense of dizziness; she felt suffocated by the tight bodice of her riding habit, and her hands holding the reins began to shake. With faint vision, she veered into the narrow overgrown path and spurred on her horse. She heard a warning shout from Paul, and before she knew it her hat had been knocked off her head and her hair was violently pulled, causing a searing pain on her scalp.
‘Ouch,’ she cried out, drawing up her horse, which halted, quivering.
She had not noticed the limb of a pine tree reaching out across the path; it had grazed her forehead and now her hair was caught in the branch. She leant back to avoid pulling it further.
‘Oh! Oh!’ she whimpered.
Paul rode up beside her, took her reins and patted both horses on the withers.
‘I tried to warn you about that tree!’ he lamented. ‘Here, lean on my shoulder, and I’ll untangle your hair.’
He flung down his whip, pulled off his gloves and carefully set about freeing her snarled, dark-brown locks, scattering hairpins in the process.
‘Does it hurt?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she moaned. ‘Ouch, ouch!’
‘Is this better?’
‘Yes — oh, yes — that’s better.’
He tried to be as deft as possible, and the tenderness of his movements made her forget the pain. When he was done at last she remained leaning against his shoulder, their two horses quivering side by side. She was spellbound by his smile, which reminded her of some extraordinarily beautiful young god. She closed her eyes, and everything sank away. .
Suddenly she became conscious of his breath near her face, then she felt the hot pressure of his lips on hers. As if she had received an electric shock, she sat bolt upright and stared at him with flashing eyes.
‘Paul!’ she cried.
She was at a loss for what to say or what to do. He continued to hold her eyes, half bashfully, half beseechingly, still wearing that winsome smile. Then, without warning, she slid down from her mount, retrieved her hat, clapped it on her dishevelled hair, picked up her whip and swung herself up to the saddle, at which her horse reared and sped off along the narrow path, beneath the overhanging pine branches.
She charged ahead without once looking back, filled with impotent fury, as though his kiss had stung her like a bee. Turning onto the country road, she urged her horse to go faster, and on she galloped between the fields of burnished gold, her hair and white veil streaming behind her, her skirt flapping wildly, causing the farmhands to pause in their labours and stare. Gradually she took possession of herself; her hands became steady again and she slowed the horse to a trot as she traversed the oak wood. At the sandy hollow she dismounted, tethered the horse to a beech sapling and, lifting the train of her habit with one hand, picked her way down the slope. The sand shifted beneath her tread, setting off small avalanches that left tree roots exposed on a layer of reddish earth. At the deepest point she halted and stood quite still a moment, with her eyes closed. Then she sighed, threw off her top hat and subsided on to the cool, shady ground. Burying her face in her arms, she began softly to cry.
Paul’s kiss had shocked her, and she was annoyed with herself for having fled instead of telling him off for his effrontery. Of course, it was not the first time he had chased her in fun and stolen a kiss, but they had only been children then — well, she had been a child, anyway. This time had been different; there had been a warm urgency in his kiss, a sensation that was new to her, and frightening, too. Why, oh why had he done it? That kiss had turned everything upside down, throwing into utter confusion what she had thought of as a gentle, budding friendship.
In her tearful distress she did not hear the soft thud of hooves reverberating in the sand as Paul rode up to the rim of the White Hollow, where he dismounted. After tethering his horse with hers, he clambered down to where she lay and softly called her name.
She raised herself up and stared at him through her tears. He was kneeling before her with such an engaging, fond expression in his eyes that she felt her anger ebb away.
‘Why did you rush away like that?’ he asked gently. ‘Did I make you angry? Was it so wrong of me?’
‘Yes it certainly was!’ she exclaimed, her resolute tone belying the frisson of pleasure at her recollection of Paul’s offending lips. ‘I never gave you permission to kiss me! Not ever!’
She waited for his response. He would no doubt remind her of those playful kisses of past summers, for which no permission had been given either. But he said nothing. Could that mean that the kiss had been different for him, too? She hid her face in her arms again.
‘What if I asked your permission, Freddie? What if I asked your permission now, as I have wanted to for such a long time? Tell me, would that be so wrong of me?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she murmured almost inaudibly.
‘Don’t you understand what I am saying? I love you, and I’m asking you if you love me enough to be my wife!’
Blushing scarlet, with trembling lips, she felt her heart melting in secret rapture at the idea of falling into his arms with unconditional abandon. But in the next instant her indomitable pride reared its lofty head, tearing the blindfold from her eyes, and in a flash she saw him as she had seen him in The Hague: egotistic, frivolous, vain.
‘You don’t mean that, Paul!’ she replied with icy self-control, and calmly set about winding her flowing tresses into a chignon.
‘I don’t mean it?’ he echoed, casting her a pained, searching look.
‘You may think you mean what you say,’ she said, and then, with more conviction: ‘But you are mistaken. You are just imagining that you have feelings for me — it’s got nothing to do with love. You’ll feel the exactly the same about someone else tomorrow, about Léonie Eekhof, for instance, or Françoise Oudendijk and goodness knows who else the day after. If I weren’t wearing my riding costume — which I dare say is quite becoming — it wouldn’t even have entered your head to ask anything so silly.’
He had never heard her speak in such a sharp, sarcastic tone. For a moment he was unsure what to answer, then his indignation got the better of him: ‘Does it ever occur to you, Freddie, that the things you say might be hurtful?’