Page 493 - women-in-love

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 shape-
ly, 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 quiv-
er, 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 ea-
ger, 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,

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