He held her close, in the running warmth of the fire. The flame itself was like a forgetting. And her soft, warm, ripe weight! Slowly his blood turned, and began to ebb back into strength and reckless vigour again.
"And perhaps the women really wanted to be there and love you properly, only perhaps they couldn't. Perhaps it wasn't all their fault," she said.
"I know it. Do you think I don't know what a broken-backed snake that's been trodden on I was myself!"
She clung to him suddenly. She had not wanted to start all this again. Yet some perversity had made her.
"But you're not now," she said. "You're not that now: a broken-backed snake that's been trodden on."
"I don't know what I am. There's black days ahead."
"No!" she protested, clinging to him. "Why? Why?"
"There's black days coming for us all and for everybody," he repeated with a prophetic gloom.
"No! You're not to say it!"
He was silent. But she could feel the black void of despair inside him. That was the death of all desire, the death of all love: this despair that was like the dark cave inside the men, in which their spirit was lost.