ess, no love between them any
more, only the maddening, sensuous lust for discovery and the
insatiable, exorbitant gratification in the sensual beauties of
her body. And she was a store, a store of absolute beauties that
it drove him to contemplate. There was such a feast to enjoy,
and he with only one man's capacity.

He lived in a passion of sensual discovery with her for some
time--it was a duel: no love, no words, no kisses even,
only the maddening perception of beauty consummate, absolute
through touch. He wanted to touch her, to discover her,
maddeningly he wanted to know her. Yet he must not hurry, or he
missed everything. He must enjoy one beauty at a time. And the
multitudinous beauties of her body, the many little rapturous
places, sent him mad with delight, and with desire to be able to
know more, to have strength to know more. For all was there.

He would say during the daytime:

"To-night I shall know the little hollow under her ankle,
where the blue vein crosses." And the thought of it, and the
desire for it, made a thick darkness of anticipation.

He would go all the day waiting for the night to come, when
he could give himself to the enjoyment of some luxurious
absolute of beauty in her. The thought of the hidden resources
of her, the undiscovered beauties and ecstatic places of delight
in her body, waiting, only waiting for him to discover them,
sent him slightly insane. He was obsessed. If he did not
discover and make known to himself these delights, they might be
lost for ever. He wished he had a hundred men's energies, with
which to enjoy her. [He wished he were a cat, to lick her with a
rough, grating, lascivious tongue. He wanted to wallow in her,
bury himself in her flesh, cover himself over with her flesh.]

And she, separate, with a strange, dangerous, glistening look
in her eyes received all his activities upon her as if they were
expected by her, and provoked him when he was quiet to more,
till sometimes he was ready to perish for sheer inability to be
satisfied of her, inability to have had enough of her.

Their children became mere offspring to them, they lived in
the darkness and death of their own sensual activities.
Sometimes he felt he was going mad with a sense of Absolute
Beauty, perceived by him in her through his senses. It was
something too much for him. And in everything, was this same,
almost sinister, terrifying beauty. But in the revelations of
her body through contact