nical contraction.

And she was drawn to him strangely, as in a spell. Kneeling on the
hearth-rug before him, she put her arms round his loins, and put her
face against his thigh. Riches! Riches! She was overwhelmed with a
sense of a heavenful of riches.

'We love each other,' she said in delight.

'More than that,' he answered, looking down at her with his glimmering,
easy face.

Unconsciously, with her sensitive fingertips, she was tracing the back
of his thighs, following some mysterious life-flow there. She had
discovered something, something more than wonderful, more wonderful
than life itself. It was the strange mystery of his life-motion, there,
at the back of the thighs, down the flanks. It was a strange reality of
his being, the very stuff of being, there in the straight downflow of
the thighs. It was here she discovered him one of the sons of God such
as were in the beginning of the world, not a man, something other,
something more.

This was release at last. She had had lovers, she had known passion.
But this was neither love nor passion. It was the daughters of men
coming back to the sons of God, the strange inhuman sons of God who are
in the beginning.

Her face was now one dazzle of released, golden light, as she looked up
at him, and laid her hands full on his thighs, behind, as he stood
before her. He looked down at her with a rich bright brow like a diadem
above his eyes. She was beautiful as a new marvellous flower opened at
his knees, a paradisal flower she was, beyond womanhood, such a flower
of luminousness. Yet something was tight and unfree in him. He did not
like this crouching, this radiance--not altogether.

It was all achieved, for her. She had found one of the sons of God from
the Beginning, and he had found one of the first most luminous
daughters of men.

She traced with her hands the line of his loins and thighs, at the
back, and a living fire ran through her, from him, darkly. It was a
dark flood of electric passion she released from him, drew into
herself. She had established a rich new circuit, a new current of
passional electric energy, between the two of them, released from the
darkest poles of the body and established in perfect circuit. It was a
dark fire of electricity that rushed from him to her, and flooded them
both with rich peace, satisfaction.

'My love,' she cried, lifting her face to him, her eyes, her mouth open
in transport.

'My love,' he answered, bending