was uncertain--that he had noticed--and she was not domestic, and
she was not easy, and she was not quiet, or beautiful, except in
some dresses in some lights. But the great gift she had was that she
understood what was said to her; there had never been any one like her
for talking to. You could say anything--you could say everything, and
yet she was never servile. Here he pulled himself up, for it seemed to
him suddenly that he knew less about her than about any one. All these
thoughts had occurred to him many times already; often had he tried to
argue and reason; and again he had reached the old state of doubt. He
did not know her, and he did not know what she felt, or whether they
could live together, or whether he wanted to marry her, and yet he was
in love with her.

Supposing he went to her and said (he slackened his pace and began to
speak aloud, as if he were speaking to Rachel):

"I worship you, but I loathe marriage, I hate its smugness, its safety,
its compromise, and the thought of you interfering in my work, hindering
me; what would you answer?"

He stopped, leant against the trunk of a tree, and gazed without seeing
them at some stones scattered on the bank of the dry river-bed. He saw
Rachel's face distinctly, the grey eyes, the hair, the mouth; the face
that could look so many things--plain, vacant, almost insignificant, or
wild, passionate, almost beautiful, yet in his eyes was always the same
because of the extraordinary freedom with which she looked at him, and
spoke as she felt. What would she answer? What did she feel? Did she
love him, or did she feel nothing at all for him or for any other man,
being, as she had said that afternoon, free, like the wind or the sea?