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He surveyed the rind of the world: houses, factories, tra on, all

on the discarded surface An earthquake had burst it all from

inside It was as if the surface of the world had been broken

away entire: Ilkeston, streets, church, people, work,

rule-of-the-day, all intact; and yet peeled away into unreality,

leaving here exposed the inside, the reality: one's own being,

strange feelings and passions and yearnings and beliefs and

aspirations, suddenly become present, revealed, the permanent

bedrock, knitted one rock with the wos are not what they seeht a woman was a woman merely by virtue of her

skirts and petticoats And now, lo, the whole world could be

divested of its gararment could lie there shed away

intact, and one could stand in a neorld, a new earth, naked

in a new, naked universe It was too astounding and

s didn't ot up at four o'clock, and had broth at tea-tiht One didn't put on one's

clothes or one did put on one's clothes He still was not quite

sure it was not criht be so supremely absolved All that mattered was that he

should love her and she should love him and they should live

kindled to one another, like the Lord in two burning bushes that

were not consumed And so they lived for the time

She was less hampered than he, so she came more quickly to

her fulness, and was sooner ready to enjoy again a return to the