With each word she crept closer, sank nearer beside him. She knelt beside him. She sought his hands, his eyes ... his eyes. He saw her face hands eyes kneeling beside him who was crumpled beyond her.... He saw not her face, not her hands. He saw white thighs, white, wide, very soft, very penetrable ... hers ... darkly penetrable; they were the stuff of his flesh, they were the stuff of his brain and they were pierced by someone!... He saw rootflesh of a man ... not he! piercing the stuff of his brain.
He got up. Her face was still low where his face had been. Her face was near his feet. His feet touched her face.
“Our Lord has spoken,” he said, “and I throw no stone.”
She was very still, her face low above his feet. Listening with a firm stillness her body was hard and she held her face above his feet.
“Our Lord has spoken further!—‘But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication causeth her to commit adultery.’ So has said our Lord.”
She was moveless.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Rise up.”
“Let me here, dearest, try to tell you all. Try to tell you what I know now I must: how I was helpless, how I was poisoned dead ... how I was lifted up.”