Page:Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891 Volume 2).pdf/53

gazed into the pail. But a few—mainly the younger ones—rested their heads sideways. This was Tess Durbeyfield’s habit, her temple pressing the milcher’s flank, her eyes fixed on the far end of the meadow with the gaze of one lost in meditation. She was milking Old Pretty thus, and the sun chancing to be on the milking-side it shone flat upon her pink-gowned form, and her white curtain-bonnet, and upon her profile, rendering it dazzlingly keen as a cameo cut from the dun background of the cow.

She did not know that Clare had followed her round, and that he sat under his cow watching her. The absolute stillness of her head and features was remarkable; she might have been in a trance, her eyes open, yet unseeing. Nothing in the picture moved but Old Pretty’s tail and Tess’s pink hands, the latter so gently as to be a rhythmic pulsation only, as if they were obeying a reflex stimulus, like a beating heart.

How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he had seen before, and cheeks