The Haunted Storm by Philip Pullman

around and saw him.
    He immediately felt awkward and shy, but he did not move an inch.
    As for Elizabeth, she stood still too, watching him. She had no idea at all of what he might do. He might just turn his back and walk away, for all she knew of him, or he might run up to her, worst of all, and remind her of where they had met , and talk vacuously while he eyed her body. Just for a moment, before either of them moved, she suffered the humiliating torture of knowing that he could easily be the worst thing in the world.
    Then he stepped forward almost as if he had been pushed, and walked up to her unwillingly. As soon as he got close enough for her to see the expression on his face she knew she was safe. He looked disturbed, even distressed, and before a second was up she did, too. In order to help him she went a few paces towards him, so that he should not be embarrassed – have to wait –
    He saw that she had begun to cry, silently and proudly, but in a total confusion. It was his fault; he cursed himself. But then, unable to help himself, he ran the last few yards and stopped dead in front of her. It was astonishing; he was completely helpless. Something had suddenly taken possession of him. He was shaking from head to foot; he felt his arms rising to stretch out towards her and saw her hands move from her side to meet his, and then they touched and his hands clasped tightly around hers. Then without seeming to make the least effort, without seeming to move at all, they were in each other’s arms. Matthew felt a pressure as if all the blood in his body suffused his brain; his eyes closed, and he rested his cheek on the top of her head, hearing himself sigh, and drank in the sweet smell of her hair like water, as if he were dying of thirst.
    She pressed her face into his shoulder, and felt the tweed of his coat rough against her cheek.
    “No! I don’t know you at all!” he began to mutter wildly. “I’ve never seen you before; I can’t understand it, I can’t understand the least little thing about it, I’m lost completely; but now you’re here you mustn’t go, you mustn’t ever leave me; we must try and make sense of it…”
    “Are you afraid of me, then?” she said quietly.
    “Afraid? No! Yes! I’m overcome with fear – look – I’m trembling –”
    He let go of her and held his hands out in front of him, shaking like leaves. As soon as he did so he had to struggle with himself to keep from seizing her again and holding her more tightly than before. She looked him in the eyes; hers were still wet with tears, and the look in them, so tender and yet so cold – yes! – indifferent – nearly forced him to his knees.
    “You are –” he began, and stopped, and his voice rose to a cry – “Oh God! It’s not true, any of it, from the beginning of the world it’s all been false and mocking; and you, now, what I feel for you, if that is false and untrue then I am not here, and you are not here with me, and the sky is not grey, and no storms exist. And this storm here in my heart, now, and my mind, what of that? Well, that’s a deception, too. Tell me, though… Elizabeth,” he said, more calmly, “tell me what you thought I was thinking, there on the beach.”
    They stood a couple of feet apart, and each of them wondered at the force in the other’s eyes.
    “I thought you might have been – you might have been dismayed, you might have thought I was mad, or you were,” she said.
    “No, no! I know you didn’t think that – Christ, we can be honest with each other! In fact we can’t be anything else. There’s no hope for us now, if we’re not; no, I’ll tell you what it was I was thinking. I was thinking that I loved you!”
    This seemed to shock her profoundly, for she went pale and closed her eyes for a second. Matthew felt that unless he continued to talk, swiftly and convincingly, to press his case, he would lose her altogether. Already he regretted having said what he had; but the