Page 492 - women-in-love

ing into his veins, like an intoxicant. Her arms were round
his neck, he kissed her and held her perfectly suspended,
she was all slack and flowing into him, and he was the firm,
strong cup that receives the wine of her life. So she lay cast
upon him, stranded, lifted up against him, melting and
melting under his kisses, melting into his limbs and bones,
as if he were soft iron becoming surcharged with her elec-
tric life.
Till she seemed to swoon, gradually her mind went, and
she passed away, everything in her was melted down and
fluid, and she lay still, become contained by him, sleeping
in him as lightning sleeps in a pure, soft stone. So she was
passed away and gone in him, and he was perfected.
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 pas-
sion 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 dan-
gerous! Her soul thrilled with complete knowledge. This
was the glistening, forbidden apple, this face of a man. She

492 Women in Love