Women in Love

When she opened her eyes again, and saw the patch of lights in the

distance, it seemed to her strange that the world still existed, that

she was standing under the bridge resting her head on Gerald's breast.

Gerald--who was he? He was the exquisite adventure, the desirable

unknown to her.

She looked up, and in the darkness saw his face above her, his shapely,

male face. There seemed a faint, white light emitted from him, a white

aura, as if he were visitor from the unseen. She reached up, like Eve

reaching to the apples on the tree of knowledge, and she kissed him,

though her passion was a transcendent fear of the thing he was,

touching his face with her infinitely delicate, encroaching wondering

fingers. Her fingers went over the mould of his face, over his

features. How perfect and foreign he was--ah how dangerous! Her soul

thrilled with complete knowledge. This was the glistening, forbidden

apple, this face of a man. She kissed him, putting her fingers over his

face, his eyes, his nostrils, over his brows and his ears, to his neck,

to know him, to gather him in by touch. He was so firm, and shapely,

with such satisfying, inconceivable shapeliness, strange, yet

unutterably clear. He was such an unutterable enemy, yet glistening

with uncanny white fire. She wanted to touch him and touch him and

touch him, till she had him all in her hands, till she had strained him

into her knowledge. Ah, if she could have the precious KNOWLEDGE of

him, she would be filled, and nothing could deprive her of this. For he

was so unsure, so risky in the common world of day.

'You are so BEAUTIFUL,' she murmured in her throat.

He wondered, and was suspended. But she felt him quiver, and she came

down involuntarily nearer upon him. He could not help himself. Her

fingers had him under their power. The fathomless, fathomless desire

they could evoke in him was deeper than death, where he had no choice.

But she knew now, and it was enough. For the time, her soul was

destroyed with the exquisite shock of his invisible fluid lightning.

She knew. And this knowledge was a death from which she must recover.

How much more of him was there to know? Ah much, much, many days

harvesting for her large, yet perfectly subtle and intelligent hands

upon the field of his living, radio-active body. Ah, her hands were

eager, greedy for knowledge. But for the present it was enough, enough,

as much as her soul could bear. Too much, and she would shatter

herself, she would fill the fine vial of her soul too quickly, and it

would break. Enough now--enough for the time being. There were all the

after days when her hands, like birds, could feed upon the fields of

him mystical plastic form--till then enough.