and doggy, even in his mind. It needs sheer sensuality even to purify and quicken the mind. Sheer fiery sensuality, not messiness.
Ah God, how rare a thing a man is! They are all dogs that trot and sniff and copulate. To have found a man who was not afraid and not ashamed! She looked at him now, sleeping so like a wild animal asleep, gone, gone in the remoteness of it. She nestled down, not to be away from him.
Till his rousing waked her completely. He was sitting up in bed, looking down at her. She saw her own nakedness in his eyes, immediate knowledge of her. And the fluid, male knowledge of herself seemed to flow to her from his eyes and wrap her voluptuously. Oh, how voluptuous and lovely it was to have limbs and body half-asleep, heavy and suffused with passion!
"Is it time to wake up?" she said.
"Half-past six."
She had to be at the lane-end at eight. Always, always, always this compulsion on one!
"I might make the breakfast and bring it up here; should I?" he said.
"Oh, yes!"
Flossie whimpered gently below. He got up and threw off his pyjamas, and rubbed himself with a towel. When the human being is full of courage and full of life, how beautiful it is! So she thought, as she watched him in silence.
"Draw the curtain, will you?"
The sun was shining already on the tender green leaves of morning, and the wood stood bluey-fresh, in the nearness. She sat up in bed, looking dreamily out through the dormer window, her naked arms pushing her naked breasts together. He was dressing himself. She was half-dreaming of life, a life together with him: just a life.
He was going, fleeing from her dangerous, crouching nakedness. "Have I lost my nightie altogether?" she said.
He pushed his hand down in the bed, and pulled out the bit of flimsy silk.
"I knowed I felt silk at my ankles," he said.
But the night dress was slit almost in two.
"Never mind!" she said. "It belongs here, really. I'll leave it."
