Page 273 - women-in-love

against her, and covered his face with hard, fierce kisses of
passion. In spite of his otherness, the old blood beat up in
him.
‘Not this, not this,’ he whimpered to himself, as the first
perfect mood of softness and sleep-loveliness ebbed back
away from the rushing of passion that came up to his limbs
and over his face as she drew him. And soon he was a perfect
hard flame of passionate desire for her. Yet in the small core
of the flame was an unyielding anguish of another thing.
But this also was lost; he only wanted her, with an extreme
desire that seemed inevitable as death, beyond question.
Then, satisfied and shattered, fulfilled and destroyed,
he went home away from her, drifting vaguely through the
darkness, lapsed into the old fire of burning passion. Far
away, far away, there seemed to be a small lament in the
darkness. But what did it matter? What did it matter, what
did anything matter save this ultimate and triumphant ex-
perience of physical passion, that had blazed up anew like a
new spell of life. ‘I was becoming quite dead-alive, nothing
but a word-bag,’ he said in triumph, scorning his other self.
Yet somewhere far off and small, the other hovered.
The men were still dragging the lake when he got back.
He stood on the bank and heard Gerald’s voice. The water
was still booming in the night, the moon was fair, the hills
beyond were elusive. The lake was sinking. There came the
raw smell of the banks, in the night air.
Up at Shortlands there were lights in the windows, as if
nobody had gone to bed. On the landing-stage was the old
doctor, the father of the young man who was lost. He stood

273