第 36 页

and unguarded. He knew this, and his first kiss was very gentle,

and soft, and assuring, so assuring. So that her soft,

defenseless mouth became assured, even bold, seeking upon his

mouth. And he answered her gradually, gradually, his soft kiss

sinking in softly, softly, but ever more heavily, more heavily

yet, till it was too heavy for her to meet, and she began to

sink under it. She was sinking, sinking, his smile of latent

gratification was becoming more tense, he was sure of her. He

let the whole force of his will sink upon her to sweep her away.

But it was too great a shock for her. With a sudden horrible

movement she ruptured the state that contained them both.

"Don't--don't!"

It was a rather horrible cry that seemed to come out of her,

not to belong to her. It was some strange agony of terror crying

out the words. There was something vibrating and beside herself

in the noise. His nerves ripped like silk.

"What's the matter?" he said, as if calmly. "What's the

matter?"

She came back to him, but trembling, reservedly this

time.

Her cry had given him gratification. But he knew he had been

too sudden for her. He was now careful. For a while he merely

sheltered her. Also there had broken a flaw into his perfect

will. He wanted to persist, to begin again, to lead up to the

point where he had let himself go on her, and then manage more

carefully, successfully. So far she had won. And the battle was

not over yet. But another voice woke in him and prompted him to

let her go--let her go in contempt.

He sheltered her, and soothed her, and caressed her, and

kissed her, and again began to come nearer, nearer. He gathered

himself together. Even if he did not take her, he would make her

relax, he would fuse away her resistance. So softly, softly,

with infinite caressiveness he kissed her, and the whole of his

being seemed to fondle her. Till, at the verge, swooning at the

breaking point, there came from her a beaten, inarticulate,

moaning cry:

"Don't--oh, don't!"

His veins fused with extreme voluptuousness. For a moment he

almost lost control of himself, and continued automatically. But

there was a moment of inaction, of cold suspension. He was not

going to take her. He drew her to him and soothed her, and

caressed her. But the pure zest had gone. She struggled to

herself and realized he was not going to take her. And then, at

the very last moment, when his fondling had come near again, his

hot living desire despising her, against his cold sensual

desire, she broke violently away from him.

"Don't," she cried, harsh now with hatred, and she flung her

hand across and hit him violently. "Keep off of me."

His blood stood still for a moment. Then the smile came again

within him, steady, cruel.

"Why, what's the matter?" he said, with suave irony.

"Nobody's going to hurt you."

"I know what you want," she said.

"I know what I want," he said. "What's the odds?"

"Well, you're not going to have it off me."

"Aren't I? Well, then I'm not. It's no use crying about it,

is it?"

"No, it isn't," said the girl, rather disconcerted by his

irony.

"But there's no need to have a row about it. We can kiss good

night just the same, can't we?"

She was silent in the darkness.

"Or do you want your hat and umbrella to go home this

minute?"

Still she was silent. He watched her dark figure as she stood

there on the edge of the faint darkness, and he waited.

"Come and say good night nicely, if we're going to say it,"

he said.

Still she did not stir. He put his hand out and drew her into

the darkness again.

"It's warmer in here," he said; "a lot cosier."

His will had not yet relaxed from her. The moment of hatred

exhilarated him.

"I'm going now," she muttered, as he closed his hand over

her.

"See how well you fit your place," he said, as he drew her to

her previous position, close upon him. "What do you want to

leave it for?"

And gradually the intoxication invaded him again, the zest

came back. After all, why should he not take her?

But she did not yield to him entirely.

"Are you a married man?" she asked at length.

"What if I am?" he said.

She did not answer.

"I don't ask you whether you're married or not," he

said.

"You know jolly well I'm not," she answered hotly. Oh,

if she could only break away from him, if only she need not

yield to him.

At length her will became cold against him. She had escaped.

But she hated him for her escape more than for her danger. Did

he despise her so coldly? And she was in torture of adherence to

him still.

"Shall I see you next week--next Saturday?" he said, as

they returned to the town. She did not answer.

"Come to the Empire with me--you and Gertie," he

said.

"I should look well, going with a married man," she said.

"I'm no less of a man for being married, am I?" he said.

"Oh, it's a different matter altogether with a married man,"

she said, in a ready-made speech that showed her chagrin.

"How's that?" he asked.

But she would not enlighten him. Yet she promised, without

promising, to be at the meeting-place next Saturday evening.

So he left her. He did not know her name. He caught a train

and went home.

It was the last train, he was very late. He was not home till

midnight. But he was quite indifferent. He had no real relation

with his home, not this man which he now was. Anna was sitting

up for him. She saw the queer, absolved look on his face, a sort

of latent, almost sinister smile, as if he were absolved from

his "good" ties.

"Where have you been?" she asked, puzzled, interested.

"To the Empire."

"Who with?"

"By myself. I came home with Tom Cooper."

She looked at him, and wondered what he had been doing She

was indifferent as to whether he lied or not.

"You have come home very strange," she said. And there was an

appreciative inflexion in the speech.

He was not affected. As for his humble, good self, he was

absolved from it. He sat down and ate heartily. He was not

tired. He seemed to take no notice of her.

For Anna the moment was critical. She kept herself aloof, and

watched him. He talked to her, but with a little indifference,

since he was scarcely aware of her. So, then she did not affect

him. Here was a new turn of affairs! He was rather attractive,

nevertheless. She liked him better than the ordinary mute,

half-effaced, half-subdued man she usually knew him to be. So,

he was blossoming out into his real self! It piqued her. Very

good, let him blossom! She liked a new turn of affairs. He was a

strange man come home to her. Glancing at him, she saw she could

not reduce him to what he had been before. In an instant she

gave it up. Yet not without a pang of rage, which would insist

on their old, beloved love, their old, accustomed intimacy and

her old, established supremacy. She almost rose up to fight for

them. And looking at him, and remembering his father, she was

wary. This was the new turn of affairs!

Very good, if she could not influence him in the old way, she

would be level with him in the new. Her old defiant hostility

came up. Very good, she too was out on her own adventure. Her

voice, her manner changed, she was ready for the game. Something

was liberated in her. She liked him. She liked this strange man

come home to her. He was very welcome, indeed! She was very glad

to welcome a stranger. She had been bored by the old husband. To

his latent, cruel smile she replied with brilliant challenge. He

expected her to keep the moral fortress. Not she! It was much

too dull a part. She challenged him back with a sort of

radiance, very bright and free, opposite to him. He looked at

her, and his eyes glinted. She too was out in the field.

His senses pricked up and keenly attended to her. She

laughed, perfectly indifferent and loose as he was. He came

towards her. She neither rejected him nor responded to him. In a

kind of radiance, superb in her inscrutability, she laughed

before him. She too could throw everything overboard, love,

intimacy, responsibility. What were her four children to her

now? What did it matter that this man was the father of her four

children?

He was the sensual male seeking his pleasure, she was the

female ready to take hers: but in her own way. A man could turn

into a free lance: so then could a woman. She adhered as little

as he to the moral world. All that had gone before was nothing

to her. She was another woman, under the instance of a strange

man. He was a stranger to her, seeking his own ends. Very good.

She wanted to see what this stranger would do now, what he

was.

She laughed, and kept him at arm's length, whilst apparently

ignoring him. She watched him undress as if he were a stranger.

Indeed he was a stranger to her.

And she roused him profoundly, violently, even before he

touched her. The little creature in Nottingham had but been

leading up to this. They abandoned in one motion the moral

position, each was seeking gratification pure and simple.

Strange his wife was to him. It was as if he were a perfect

stranger, as if she were infinitely and essentially strange to

him, the other half of the world, the dark half of the moon. She

waited for his touch as if he were a marauder who had come in,

infinitely unknown and desirable to her. And he began to

discover her. He had an inkling of the vastness of the unknown

sensual store of delights she was. With a passion of

voluptuousness that made him dwell on each tiny beauty, in a

kind of frenzy of enjoyment, he lit upon her: her beauty, the

beauties, the separate, several beauties of her body.

He was quite ousted from himself, and sensually transported

by that which he discovered in her. He was another man revelling

over her. There was no tenderness, no love between them any

more, only the maddening, sensuous lust for discovery and the

insatiable, exorbitant gratification in the sensual beauties of

her body. And she was a store, a store of absolute beauties that

it drove him to contemplate. There was such a feast to enjoy,

and he with only one man's capacity.

He lived in a passion of sensual discovery with her for some

time--it was a duel: no love, no words, no kisses even,

only the maddening perception of beauty consummate, absolute

through touch. He wanted to touch her, to discover her,

maddeningly he wanted to know her. Yet he must not hurry, or he

missed everything. He must enjoy one beauty at a time. And the

multitudinous beauties of her body, the many little rapturous

places, sent him mad with delight, and with desire to be able to

know more, to have strength to know more. For all was there.

He would say during the daytime:

"To-night I shall know the little hollow under her ankle,

where the blue vein crosses." And the thought of it, and the

desire for it, made a thick darkness of anticipation.

He would go all the day waiting for the night to come, when

he could give himself to the enjoyment of some luxurious

absolute of beauty in her. The thought of the hidden resources

of her, the undiscovered beauties and ecstatic places of delight

in her body, waiting, only waiting for him to discover them,

sent him slightly insane. He was obsessed. If he did not

discover and make known to himself these delights, they might be

lost for ever. He wished he had a hundred men's energies, with

which to enjoy her. [He wished he were a cat, to lick her with a

rough, grating, lascivious tongue. He wanted to wallow in her,

bury himself in her flesh, cover himself over with her flesh.]

And she, separate, with a strange, dangerous, glistening look

in her eyes received all his activities upon her as if they were

expected by her, and provoked him when he was quiet to more,

till sometimes he was ready to perish for sheer inability to be

satisfied of her, inability to have had enough of her.

Their children became mere offspring to them, they lived in

the darkness and death of their own sensual activities.

Sometimes he felt he was going mad with a sense of Absolute

Beauty, perceived by him in her through his senses. It was

something too much for him. And in everything, was this same,

almost sinister, terrifying beauty. But in the revelations of

her body through contact with his body, was the ultimate beauty,

to know which was almost death in itself, and yet for the

knowledge of which he would have undergone endless torture. He

would have forfeited anything, anything, rather than forego his

right even to the instep of her foot, and the place from which

the toes radiated out, the little, miraculous white plain from

which ran the little hillocks of the toes, and the folded,

dimpling hollows between the toes. He felt he would have died

rather than forfeit this.

This was what their love had become, a sensuality violent and

extreme as death. They had no conscious intimacy, no tenderness

of love. It was all the lust and the infinite, maddening

intoxication of the sense, a passion of death.

He had always, all his life, had a secret dread of Absolute

Beauty. It had always been like a fetish to him, something to

fear, really. For it was immoral and against mankind. So he had

turned to the Gothic form, which always asserted the broken

desire of mankind in its pointed arches, escaping the rolling,

absolute beauty of the round arch.

But now he had given way, and with infinite sensual violence

gave himself to the realization of this supreme, immoral,

Absolute Beauty, in the body of woman. It seemed to him, that it

came to being in the body of woman, under his touch. Under his