This was what their love had bee; a sensuality violent and
extreme as death。 They had no conscious intimacy; no tenderness
of love。 It was all the lust and the infinite; maddening
intoxication of the sense; a passion of death。
He had always; all his life; had a secret dread of Absolute
Beauty。 It had always been like a fetish to him; something to
fear; really。 For it was immoral and against mankind。 So he had
turned to the Gothic form; which always asserted the broken
desire of mankind in its pointed arches; escaping the rolling;
absolute beauty of the round arch。
But now he had given way; and with infinite sensual violence
gave himself to the realization of this supreme; immoral;
Absolute Beauty; in the body of woman。 It seemed to him; that it
came to being in the body of woman; under his touch。 Under his
touch; even under his sight; it was there。 But when he neither
saw nor touched the perfect place; it was not perfect; it was
not there。 And he must make it exist。
But still the thing terrified him。 Awful and threatening it
was; dangerous to a degree; even whilst he gave himself to it。
It was pure darkness; also。 All the shameful things of the body
revealed themselves to him now with a sort of sinister; tropical
beauty。 All the shameful; natural and unnatural acts of sensual
voluptuousness which he and the woman partook