“My love,” she cried, lifting her face to him, her eyes, her mouth open in transport.
“My love,” he answered, bending and kissing her, always kissing her.
She closed her hands over the full, rounded body of his loins, as he stooped over her, she seemed to touch the quick of the mystery of darkness that was bodily him. She seemed to faint beneath, and he seemed to faint, stooping over her. It was a perfect passing away for both of them, and at the same time the most intolerable accession into being, the marvellous fullness of immediate gratification, overwhelming, out-flooding from the source of the deepest life-force, the darkest, deepest, strangest life-source of the human body, at the back and base of the loins.
After a lapse of stillness, after the rivers of strange dark fluid richness had passed over her, flooding, carrying away her mind and flooding down her spine and down her knees, past her feet, a strange flood, sweeping away everything and leaving her an essential new being, she was left quite free, she was free in complete ease, her complete self. So she rose, stilly and blithe, smiling at him. He stood before her, glimmering, so awfully real, that her heart almost stopped beating. He stood there in his strange, whole body, that had its marvellous fountains, like the bodies of the sons of God who were in the beginning. There were strange fountains of his body, more mysterious and potent than any she had imagined or known, more satisfying, ah, finally, mystically-physically satisfying. She had thought there was no source deeper than the phallic source. And now, behold, from the smitten rock of the man’s body, from the strange marvellous flanks and thighs, deeper, further in mystery than the phallic source, came the floods of ineffable darkness and ineffable riches.
They were glad, and they could forget perfectly. They laughed, and went to the meal provided. There was a venison pasty, of all things, a large broad-faced cut ham, eggs and cresses and red beetroot, and medlars and apple-tart, and tea.
“What good things!” she cried with pleasure. “How noble it looks!—shall I pour out the tea?—”
She was usually nervous and uncertain at performing these public duties, such as giving tea. But today she forgot, she was at her ease, entirely forgetting to have misgivings. The teapot poured beautifully from a proud slender spout. Her eyes were warm with smiles as she gave him his tea. She had learned at last to be still and perfect.
“Everything is ours,” she said to him.
“Everything,” he answered.
She gave a queer little crowing sound of triumph.
“I’m so glad!” she cried, with unspeakable relief.
“So am I,” he said. “But I’m thinking we’d better get out of our responsibilities as quick as we can.”
“What responsibilities?” she asked, wondering.
“We must drop our jobs, like a shot.”
A new understanding dawned into her face.
“Of course,” she said, “there’s that.”
“We must get out,” he said. “There’s nothing for it but to get out, quick.”
She looked at him doubtfully across the table.
“But where?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll just wander about for a bit.”
Again she looked at him quizzically.
“I should be perfectly happy at the Mill,” she said.
“It’s very near the old thing,” he said. “Let us wander a bit.”
His voice could be so soft and happy-go-lucky, it went through her veins like an exhilaration. Nevertheless she dreamed of a valley, and wild gardens, and peace. She had a desire too for splendour—an aristocratic extravagant splendour. Wandering seemed to her like restlessness, dissatisfaction.
“Where will you wander to?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I feel as if I would just meet you and we’d set off—just towards the distance.”
“But where can one go?” she asked anxiously. “After all, there is only the world, and none of it is very distant.”
“Still,” he said, “I should like to go with you—nowhere. It would be rather wandering just to nowhere. That’s the place to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.”
Still she meditated.
“You see, my love,” she said, “I’m so afraid that while we are only people, we’ve got to take the world that’s given—because there isn’t any other.”
“Yes there is,” he said. “There’s somewhere where we can be free—somewhere where one needn’t wear much clothes—none even—where one meets a few people who have gone through enough, and can take things for granted—where you be yourself, without bothering. There is somewhere—there are one or two people—”
“But where—?” she sighed.
“Somewhere—anywhere. Let’s wander off. That’s the thing to do—let’s wander off.”
“Yes—” she said, thrilled at the thought of travel. But to her it was only travel.
“To be free,” he said. “To be free, in a free place, with a few other people!”
“Yes,” she said wistfully. Those “few other people” depressed her.
“It isn’t really a locality, though,” he said. “It’s a perfected relation between you and me, and others—the perfect relation—so that we are free together.”
“It is, my love, isn’t it,” she said. “It’s you and me. It’s you and me, isn’t it?” She stretched out her arms to him. He went across and stooped to kiss her face. Her arms closed round him again, her hands spread upon his shoulders, moving slowly there, moving slowly on his back, down his back slowly, with a strange recurrent, rhythmic motion, yet moving slowly down, pressing mysteriously over his loins, over his flanks. The sense of the awfulness of riches that could never be impaired flooded her mind like a swoon, a death in most marvellous possession, mystic-sure. She possessed him so utterly and intolerably, that she herself lapsed out. And yet she was only sitting still in the chair, with her hands pressed upon him, and
