"An' if tha shits an' if tha pisses, I'm glad. I don't want a woman as couldna shit nor piss."
Connie could not help a sudden snort of astonished laughter, but he went on unmoved.
"Tha'rt real, tha art! Tha'rt real, even a bit of a bitch. Here tha shits an' here tha pisses: an' I lay my hand on 'em both an' like thee for it. I like thee for it. Tha's got a proper, woman's arse, proud of itself. It's none ashamed of itself, this isna."
He laid his hand close and firm over her secret places, in a kind of close greeting.
"I like it," he said. "I like it! An' if I only lived ten minutes, an' stroked thy arse an' got to know it, I should reckon I'd lived one life, sees ter! Industrial system or not! Here's one o' my lifetimes."
She turned round and climbed into his lap, clinging to him. "Kiss me!" she whispered.
And she knew the thought of their separation was latent in both their minds, and at last she was sad.
She sat on his thighs, her head against his breast, and her ivory-gleaming legs loosely apart, the fire glowing unequally upon them. Sitting with his head dropped, he looked at the folds of her body in the fireglow, and at the fleece of soft brown hair that hung down to a point between her open thighs. He reached to the table behind, and took up her bunch of flowers, still so wet that drops of rain fell on to her.
"Flowers stops out of doors all weathers," he said. "They have no houses."
"Not even a hut!" she murmured.