Women in Love

He had come for vindication. She let him hold her in his arms, clasp

her close against him. He found in her an infinite relief. Into her he

poured all his pent-up darkness and corrosive death, and he was whole

again. It was wonderful, marvellous, it was a miracle. This was the

everrecurrent miracle of his life, at the knowledge of which he was

lost in an ecstasy of relief and wonder. And she, subject, received him

as a vessel filled with his bitter potion of death. She had no power at

this crisis to resist. The terrible frictional violence of death filled

her, and she received it in an ecstasy of subjection, in throes of

acute, violent sensation.

As he drew nearer to her, he plunged deeper into her enveloping soft

warmth, a wonderful creative heat that penetrated his veins and gave

him life again. He felt himself dissolving and sinking to rest in the

bath of her living strength. It seemed as if her heart in her breast

were a second unconquerable sun, into the glow and creative strength of

which he plunged further and further. All his veins, that were murdered

and lacerated, healed softly as life came pulsing in, stealing

invisibly in to him as if it were the all-powerful effluence of the

sun. His blood, which seemed to have been drawn back into death, came

ebbing on the return, surely, beautifully, powerfully.

He felt his limbs growing fuller and flexible with life, his body

gained an unknown strength. He was a man again, strong and rounded. And

he was a child, so soothed and restored and full of gratitude.

And she, she was the great bath of life, he worshipped her. Mother and

substance of all life she was. And he, child and man, received of her

and was made whole. His pure body was almost killed. But the

miraculous, soft effluence of her breast suffused over him, over his

seared, damaged brain, like a healing lymph, like a soft, soothing flow

of life itself, perfect as if he were bathed in the womb again.

His brain was hurt, seared, the tissue was as if destroyed. He had not

known how hurt he was, how his tissue, the very tissue of his brain was

damaged by the corrosive flood of death. Now, as the healing lymph of

her effluence flowed through him, he knew how destroyed he was, like a

plant whose tissue is burst from inwards by a frost.

He buried his small, hard head between her breasts, and pressed her

breasts against him with his hands. And she with quivering hands

pressed his head against her, as he lay suffused out, and she lay fully

conscious. The lovely creative warmth flooded through him like a sleep

of fecundity within the womb. Ah, if only she would grant him the flow

of this living effluence, he would be restored, he would be complete

again. He was afraid she would deny him before it was finished. Like a

child at the breast, he cleaved intensely to her, and she could not put

him away. And his seared, ruined membrane relaxed, softened, that which

was seared and stiff and blasted yielded again, became soft and

flexible, palpitating with new life. He was infinitely grateful, as to

God, or as an infant is at its mother's breast. He was glad and

grateful like a delirium, as he felt his own wholeness come over him

again, as he felt the full, unutterable sleep coming over him, the

sleep of complete exhaustion and restoration.