[The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf]@TWC D-Link bookThe Voyage Out CHAPTER XXI 20/30
They turned away and began to walk through the trees, leaning, without fear of discovery, upon each other's arms.
They had not gone far before they began to assure each other once more that they were in love, were happy, were content; but why was it so painful being in love, why was there so much pain in happiness? The sight of the village indeed affected them all curiously though all differently.
St.John had left the others and was walking slowly down to the river, absorbed in his own thoughts, which were bitter and unhappy, for he felt himself alone; and Helen, standing by herself in the sunny space among the native women, was exposed to presentiments of disaster. The cries of the senseless beasts rang in her ears high and low in the air, as they ran from tree-trunk to tree-top.
How small the little figures looked wandering through the trees! She became acutely conscious of the little limbs, the thin veins, the delicate flesh of men and women, which breaks so easily and lets the life escape compared with these great trees and deep waters.
A falling branch, a foot that slips, and the earth has crushed them or the water drowned them.
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