Page 596 - women-in-love

Quite suddenly, he put his hand under her chin and
lifted up her face to him. Her dark blue eyes, in their wet-
ness of tears, dilated as if she was startled in her very soul.
They looked at him through their tears in terror and a lit-
tle horror. His light blue eyes were keen, small-pupilled and
unnatural in their vision. Her lips parted, as she breathed
with difficulty.
The passion came up in him, stroke after stroke, like the
ringing of a bronze bell, so strong and unflawed and in-
domitable. His knees tightened to bronze as he hung above
her soft face, whose lips parted and whose eyes dilated in a
strange violation. In the grasp of his hand her chin was un-
utterably soft and silken. He felt strong as winter, his hands
were living metal, invincible and not to be turned aside. His
heart rang like a bell clanging inside him.
He took her up in his arms. She was soft and inert, mo-
tionless. All the while her eyes, in which the tears had not
yet dried, were dilated as if in a kind of swoon of fascination
and helplessness. He was superhumanly strong, and unf-
lawed, as if invested with supernatural force.
He lifted her close and folded her against him. Her
softness, her inert, relaxed weight lay against his own sur-
charged, bronze-like limbs in a heaviness of desirability
that would destroy him, if he were not fulfilled. She moved
convulsively, recoiling away from him. His heart went up
like a flame of ice, he closed over her like steel. He would
destroy her rather than be denied.
But the overweening power of his body was too much for
her. She relaxed again, and lay loose and soft, panting in a

596 Women in Love