blood! And I am a living man! You
know, I don't need to say it, you know what happens when our looks meet.
Our looks only! Life flares up like a torch in both of us. You know if I
but brush against your skirt, how I cannot speak! You know how when our
hands touch, every drop of blood in our two bodies burns! You are a
grown woman. You know life as well as I do. You know what this means.
You are no longer even a part of his life. You are all of mine. Look at
me now."

He flung out his hands, shaking uncontrollably. "Do you see how I show
this, say this anywhere, tell this to you here, now, where anyone could
hear me? I am not ashamed of it. It is not a thing to hide. It is a
thing to glory in. It is the only honestly living thing in all our
miserable human life, the passion of a man and a woman for each other.
It is the only thing that moves us out of our cowardly lethargy of
dead-and-alive egotism. The thing that is really base and false is to
pretend that what is dead is still alive. Your marriage is dead. Your
children do not need you as you pretend. Let yourself go in this flood
that is sweeping us along. I had never thought to know it. I could fall
down and worship you because you have shown it to me. But I will show it
to you, that and the significance of what you will be when you are no
longer smothered and starved. In all this scrawling ant-heap of
humanity, there are only a handful of human beings who ever really live.
And we will be among them. All the rest are nothing, less than nothing,
to be stamped down if they impede you. They have no other destiny. But
we have! Everything comes down to that in the end. That is the only
truth. That . . . and you and I!"

In the distance, someone called Marise's name. He thought she made a
move, and said, leaning towards her, the heat of his body burning
through to her arm where he touched her, "No, no, none of those trivial,
foolish interruptions that tie you hand and foot, can tie us any longer.
They have no real strength. They can't stand for an instant against
something alive. All that rattles in your ears, that keeps you from
knowing what you really are . . ."

Someone was hurrying down the walk towards them, hidden by the hedge.
Marise could not have turned her head if her life had hung on the
action.

Vincent looked straight at her, straight and deep and strong into her
eyes, and for an instant his burning lips were pressed on hers. The
contact was terrible, mo