‘For you,’ said Bernard, ‘but yesterday I walked bang into a pillar-box. Yesterday I became engaged.’
‘How strange,’ said Susan, ‘the little heaps of sugar look by the side of our plates. Also the mottled peelings of pears, and the plush rims to the looking-glasses. I had not seen them before. Everything is now set; everything is fixed. Bernard is engaged. Something irrevocable has happened. A circle has been cast on the waters; a chain is imposed. We shall never flow freely again.’
‘For one moment only,’ said Louis. ‘Before the chain breaks, before disorder returns, see us fixed, see us displayed, see us held in a vice.
‘But now the circle breaks. Now the current flows. Now we rush faster than before. Now passions that lay in wait down there in the dark weeds which grow at the bottom rise and pound us with their waves. Pain and jealousy, envy and desire, and something deeper than they are, stronger than love and more subterranean. The voice of action speaks. Listen, Rhoda (for we are conspirators, with our hands on the cold urn), to the casual, quick, exciting voice of action, of hounds running on the scent. They speak now without troubling to finish their sentences. They talk a little language such as lovers use. An imperious brute possesses them. The nerves thrill in their thighs. Their hearts pound and churn in their sides. Susan screws her pocket-handkerchief. Jinny’s eyes dance with fire.’
‘They are immune,’ said Rhoda, ‘from picking fingers and searching eyes. How easily they turn and glance; what poses they take of energy and pride! What life shines in Jinny’s eyes; how fell, how entire Susan’s glance is, searching for insects at the roots! Their hair shines lustrous. Their eyes burn like the eyes of animals brushing through leaves on the scent of the prey. The circle is destroyed. We are thrown asunder.’
‘But soon, too soon,’ said Bernard, ‘this egotistic exultation fails. Too soon the moment of ravenous identity is over, and the appetite for happiness, and happiness, and still
