‘Why should love be like sleep?’ she asked sadly.

‘I don’t know. So that it is like death — I DO want to die from this life — and yet it is more than life itself. One is delivered over like a naked infant from the womb, all the old defences and the old body gone, and new air around one, that has never been breathed before.’

She listened, making out what he said. She knew, as well as he knew, that words themselves do not convey meaning, that they are but a gesture we make, a dumb show like any other. And she seemed to feel his gesture through her blood, and she drew back, even though her desire sent her forward.

‘But,’ she said gravely, ‘didn’t you say you wanted something that was NOT love —