Page 57 - BraveNewWorld

IDPH 57

and fun, kiss the girls .” And as they sang, the lights began slowly to fade-to
fade and at the same time to grow warmer, richer, redder, until at last they were
dancing in the crimson twilight of an Embryo Store. “Orgy- porgy .” In their
blood-coloured and foetal darkness the dancers continued for a while to circu-
late, to beat and beat out the indefatigable rhythm. “Orgy-porgy .” Then the
circle wavered, broke, fell in partial disintegration on the ring of couches whi-
ch surrounded-circle enclosing circle-the table and its planetary chairs. “Orgy-
porgy .” Tenderly the deep Voice crooned and cooed; in the red twilight it was
as though some enormous negro dove were hovering benevolently over the
now prone or supine dancers.

They were standing on the roof; Big Henry had just sung eleven. The night was
calm and warm.
“Wasn’t it wonderful?” said Fifi Bradlaugh. “Wasn’t it simply wonderful?” She
looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there
was no trace of agitation or excitement-for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied.
Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere
vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in
equilibrium. A rich and living peace. For the Solidarity Service had given as
well as taken, drawn off only to replenish. She was full, she was made perfect,
she was still more than merely herself. “Didn’t you think it was wonderful?”
she insisted, looking into Bernard’s face with those supernaturally shining eyes.

“Yes, I thought it was wonderful,” he lied and looked away; the sight of her
transfigured face was at once an accusation and an ironical reminder of his own
separateness. He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the servi-
ce began-more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead sati-
ety. Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into the Greater
Being; alone even in Morgana’s embrace-much more alone, indeed, more hope-
lessly himself than he had ever been in his life before. He had emerged from
that crimson twilight into the common electric glare with a self-consciousness
intensified to the pitch of agony. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her
shining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault. “Quite wonderful,” he
repeated; but the only thing he could think of was Morgana’s eyebrow.

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