Gold of sunshine touched the closed white curtains. She felt it wanted to come in.
“Oh! do let’s draw the curtains! The birds are singing so! Do let the sun in,” she said.
He slipped out of bed with his back to her, naked and white and thin, and went to the window, stooping a little, drawing the curtains and looking out for a moment. The back was white and fine, the small buttocks beautiful with an exquisite, delicate manliness, the back of the neck ruddy and delicate and yet strong.
There was an inward, not an outward strength in the delicate fine boy.
“But you are beautiful!” she said. “So pure and fine! Come!” She held her arms out.
He was ashamed to turn to her, because of his aroused nakedness.
He caught his shirt off the floor, and held it to him, coming to her.
“No!” she said, still holding out her beautiful slim arms from her dropping breasts. “Let me see you!”
He dropped the shirt and stood still, looking towards her. The sun through the low window sent in a beam that lit up his thighs and slim belly, and the erect phallus rising darkish and hot-looking from the little cloud of vivid gold-red hair. She was startled and afraid.
“How strange!” she said slowly. “How strange he stands there! So big! and so dark and cocksure! Is he like that?”
The man looked down the front of his slender white body, and laughed. Between the slim breasts the hair was dark, almost black. But at the root of the belly, where the phallus rose thick and arching, it was gold-red, vivid in a little cloud.
“So proud!” she murmured, uneasy. “And so lordly! Now I know why men are so overbearing! But he’s lovely, really. Like another being! A bit terrifying! But lovely really! And he comes to me!—” She caught her lower lip between her teeth, in fear and excitement.
The man looked down in silence at the tense phallus, that did not change.—“Ay!” he said at last, in a little voice. “Ay ma lad! tha’rt theer right enough. Yi, tha mun rear thy head! Theer on thy own, eh? an’ ta’es no count o’ nob’dy! Tha ma’es nowt o’ me, John Thomas. Art boss? of me? Eh well, tha’rt more cocky than me, an’ tha says less. John Thomas! Dost want her? Does want my Lady Jane? Tha’s dipped me in again, tha hast. Ay, an’ tha comes up smilin’—Ax ’er then! Ax Lady Jane! Say: Lift up your heads o’ ye gates, that the king of glory may come in. Ay, th’ cheek on thee! Cunt, that’s what tha’rt after. Tell Lady Jane tha wants cunt. John Thomas, an’ th’ cunt o’ Lady Jane!—”
“Oh, don’t tease him,” said Connie, crawling on her knees on the bed towards him and putting her arms round his white slender loins, and drawing him to her so that her hanging, swinging breasts touched the tip of the stirring, erect phallus, and caught the drop of moisture. She held the man fast.
“Lie down!” he said. “Lie down! Let me come!”
He was in a hurry now.
And afterwards, when they had been quite still, the woman had to uncover the man again, to look at the mystery of the phallus.
“And now he’s tiny, and soft like a little bud of life!” she said, taking the soft small penis in her hand. “Isn’t he somehow lovely! so on his own, so strange! And so innocent! And he comes so far into me! You must never insult him, you know. He’s mine too. He’s not only yours. He’s mine! And so lovely and innocent!” And she held the penis soft in her hand.
He laughed.
“Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in kindred love,” he said.
“Of course!” she said. “Even when he’s soft and little I feel my heart simply tied to him. And how lovely your hair is here! quite, quite different!”
“That’s John Thomas’ hair, not mine!” he said.
“John Thomas! John Thomas!” and she quickly kissed the soft penis, that was beginning to stir again.
“Ay!” said the man, stretching his body almost painfully. “He’s got his root in my soul, has that gentleman! An’ sometimes I don’ know what ter do wi’ him. Ay, he’s got a will of his own, an’ it’s hard to suit him. Yet I wouldn’t have him killed.”
“No wonder men have always been afraid of him!” she said, “He’s rather terrible.”
The quiver was going through the man’s body, as the stream of consciousness again changed its direction, turning downwards. And he was helpless, as the penis in slow soft undulations filled and surged and rose up, and grew hard, standing there hard and overweening, in its curious towering fashion. The woman, too, trembled a little as she watched.
“There! Take him then! He’s thine,” said the man.
And she quivered, and her own mind melted out. Sharp soft waves of unspeakable pleasure washed over her as he entered her, and started the curious molten thrilling that spread and spread till she was carried away with the last, blind flush of extremity.
He heard the distant hooters of Stacks Gate, for seven-o’clock. It was Monday morning. He shivered a little, and with his face between her breasts pressed her soft breasts up over his ears, to deafen him.
She had not even heard the hooters. She lay perfectly still, her soul washed transparent.
“You must get up, mustn’t you?” he muttered.
“What time?” came her colourless voice.
“Seven-o’clock blowers a bit sin’.”
“I suppose I must.”
She was resenting, as she always did, the compulsion from outside.
He sat up and looked blankly out of the window.
“You do love me, don’t you?” she asked calmly.
He looked down at her.
“Tha knows what tha knows. What dost ax for!” he said, a little
