Page 129 - BraveNewWorld

IDPH 129

sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite .”’
“For Ford’s sake, John, talk sense. I can’t understand a word you say. First it’s
vacuum cleaners; then it’s knots. You’re driving me crazy.” She jumped up and,
as though afraid that he might run away from her physically, as well as with his
mind, caught him by the wrist. “Answer me this question: do you really like
me, or don’t you?”
There was a moment’s silence; then, in a very low voice, “I love you more than
anything in the world,” he said.
“Then why on earth didn’t you say so?” she cried, and so intense was her
exasperation that she drove her sharp nails into the skin of his wrist. “Instead
of drivelling away about knots and vacuum cleaners and lions, and making me
miserable for weeks and weeks.”
She released his hand and flung it angrily away from her.
“If I didn’t like you so much,” she said, “I’d be furious with you.”

And suddenly her arms were round his neck; he felt her lips soft against his
own. So deliciously soft, so warm and electric that inevitably he found himself
thinking of the embraces in Three Weeks in a Helicopter. Ooh! ooh! the stereos-
copic blonde and anh! the more than real black-amoor. Horror, horror, horror.
he fired to disengage himself; but Lenina tightened her embrace.

“Why didn’t you say so?” she whispered, drawing back her face to look at him.
Her eyes were tenderly reproachful.

“The murkiest den, the most opportune place” (the voice of conscience thun-
dered poetically), “the strongest suggestion our worser genius can, shall never
melt mine honour into lust. Never, never!” he resolved.
“You silly boy!” she was saying. “I wanted you so much. And if you wanted
me too, why didn’t you? .”

“But, Lenina .” he began protesting; and as she immediately untwined her
arms, as she stepped away from him, he thought, for a moment, that she had
taken his unspoken hint. But when she unbuckled her white patent cartridge
belt and hung it carefully over the back of a chair, he began to suspect that he
had been mistaken.
“Lenina!” he repeated apprehensively.
She put her hand to her neck and gave a long vertical pull; her white sailor’s
blouse was ripped to the hem; suspicion condensed into a too, too solid cer-
tainty. “Lenina, what are you doing?”

Zip, zip! Her answer was wordless. She stepped out of her bell-bottomed trou-

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