up 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 electric 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 passion 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 dangerous! Her soul
thrilled with complete knowledge. This was the glistening, forbidden
apple, this face of a man. She 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 shapely,
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 quiver, 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