d she lay fully
conscious. The lovely creative warmth flooded through him like a sleep
of fecundity within the womb. Ah, if only she would grant him the flow
of this living effluence, he would be restored, he would be complete
again. He was afraid she would deny him before it was finished. Like a
child at the breast, he cleaved intensely to her, and she could not put
him away. And his seared, ruined membrane relaxed, softened, that which
was seared and stiff and blasted yielded again, became soft and
flexible, palpitating with new life. He was infinitely grateful, as to
God, or as an infant is at its mother's breast. He was glad and
grateful like a delirium, as he felt his own wholeness come over him
again, as he felt the full, unutterable sleep coming over him, the
sleep of complete exhaustion and restoration.

But Gudrun lay wide awake, destroyed into perfect consciousness. She
lay motionless, with wide eyes staring motionless into the darkness,
whilst he was sunk away in sleep, his arms round her.

She seemed to be hearing waves break on a hidden shore, long, slow,
gloomy waves, breaking with the rhythm of fate, so monotonously that it
seemed eternal. This endless breaking of slow, sullen waves of fate
held her life a possession, whilst she lay with dark, wide eyes looking
into the darkness. She could see so far, as far as eternity--yet she
saw nothing. She was suspended in perfect consciousness--and of what
was she conscious?

This mood of extremity, when she lay staring into eternity, utterly
suspended, and conscious of everything, to the last limits, passed and
left her uneasy. She had lain so long motionless. She moved, she became
self-conscious. She wanted to look at him, to see him.

But she dared not make a light, because she knew he would wake, and she
did not want to break his perfect sleep, that she knew he had got of
her.

She disengaged herself, softly, and rose up a little to look at him.
There was a faint light, it seemed to her, in the room. She could just
distinguish his features, as he slept the perfect sleep. In this
darkness, she seemed to see him so distinctly. But he was far off, in
another world. Ah, she could shriek with torment, he was so far off,
and perfected, in another world. She seemed to look at him as at a
pebble far away under clear dark water. And here was she, left with all
the anguish of consciousness, whilst he was sunk deep into the other
element of mindless, remote, living