aid.

She lifted her face to him, all shining and open. It was as if he might
enter straight into the source of her radiance. His face became a
little distracted.

'Shall we go?' he said.

'As you like,' she replied.

They were soon out of the little town, and running through the uneven
lanes of the country. Ursula nestled near him, into his constant
warmth, and watched the pale-lit revelation racing ahead, the visible
night. Sometimes it was a wide old road, with grass-spaces on either
side, flying magic and elfin in the greenish illumination, sometimes it
was trees looming overhead, sometimes it was bramble bushes, sometimes
the walls of a crew-yard and the butt of a barn.

'Are you going to Shortlands to dinner?' Ursula asked him suddenly. He
started.

'Good God!' he said. 'Shortlands! Never again. Not that. Besides we
should be too late.'

'Where are we going then--to the Mill?'

'If you like. Pity to go anywhere on this good dark night. Pity to come
out of it, really. Pity we can't stop in the good darkness. It is
better than anything ever would be--this good immediate darkness.'

She sat wondering. The car lurched and swayed. She knew there was no
leaving him, the darkness held them both and contained them, it was not
to be surpassed Besides she had a full mystic knowledge of his suave
loins of darkness, dark-clad and suave, and in this knowledge there was
some of the inevitability and the beauty of fate, fate which one asks
for, which one accepts in full.

He sat still like an Egyptian Pharoah, driving the car. He felt as if
he were seated in immemorial potency, like the great carven statues of
real Egypt, as real and as fulfilled with subtle strength, as these
are, with a vague inscrutable smile on the lips. He knew what it was to
have the strange and magical current of force in his back and loins,
and down his legs, force so perfect that it stayed him immobile, and
left his face subtly, mindlessly smiling. He knew what it was to be
awake and potent in that other basic mind, the deepest physical mind.
And from this source he had a pure and magic control, magical,
mystical, a force in darkness, like electricity.

It was very difficult to speak, it was so perfect to sit in this pure
living silence, subtle, full of unthinkable knowledge and unthinkable
force, upheld immemorially in timeless force, like the immobile,
supremely potent Egyptians, seated forever in their living, subtle
silence.

'We ne