for vindication. She let him hold her in his arms, clasp
her close against him. He found in her an infinite relief. Into her he
poured all his pent-up darkness and corrosive death, and he was whole
again. It was wonderful, marvellous, it was a miracle. This was the
everrecurrent miracle of his life, at the knowledge of which he was
lost in an ecstasy of relief and wonder. And she, subject, received him
as a vessel filled with his bitter potion of death. She had no power at
this crisis to resist. The terrible frictional violence of death filled
her, and she received it in an ecstasy of subjection, in throes of
acute, violent sensation.

As he drew nearer to her, he plunged deeper into her enveloping soft
warmth, a wonderful creative heat that penetrated his veins and gave
him life again. He felt himself dissolving and sinking to rest in the
bath of her living strength. It seemed as if her heart in her breast
were a second unconquerable sun, into the glow and creative strength of
which he plunged further and further. All his veins, that were murdered
and lacerated, healed softly as life came pulsing in, stealing
invisibly in to him as if it were the all-powerful effluence of the
sun. His blood, which seemed to have been drawn back into death, came
ebbing on the return, surely, beautifully, powerfully.

He felt his limbs growing fuller and flexible with life, his body
gained an unknown strength. He was a man again, strong and rounded. And
he was a child, so soothed and restored and full of gratitude.

And she, she was the great bath of life, he worshipped her. Mother and
substance of all life she was. And he, child and man, received of her
and was made whole. His pure body was almost killed. But the
miraculous, soft effluence of her breast suffused over him, over his
seared, damaged brain, like a healing lymph, like a soft, soothing flow
of life itself, perfect as if he were bathed in the womb again.

His brain was hurt, seared, the tissue was as if destroyed. He had not
known how hurt he was, how his tissue, the very tissue of his brain was
damaged by the corrosive flood of death. Now, as the healing lymph of
her effluence flowed through him, he knew how destroyed he was, like a
plant whose tissue is burst from inwards by a frost.

He buried his small, hard head between her breasts, and pressed her
breasts against him with his hands. And she with quivering hands
pressed his head against her, as he lay suffused out, an