The voice of Yuan replied, “Water-lily.” He was regarding her, she realized, with a keen gaze, more than ordinarily prolonged and remorseless. He held her with his gaze, as if he admitted, now, a special relation between them, and wished her to admit it, too. Close to her, shut in by the changing wall of rain, he seemed big and immediate, like a god, like the rain-god. His features, his yellow skin, his piercing eyes, the slash of crimson on his brown tunic—sole note of colour in a drifting, grey universe—had a terrifying distinctness. He was very close and real and living, though his life—the life behind his unreadable eyes—was not the life of men. Perhaps because it was not Yuan who looked at her, but the swirling rain, not Yuan, but the voice of the universe who spoke, distaste for his flesh vanished. Yuan was dissolved and received into the body of the rain, and she desired him. Past and future vanished; all else was shut out; there was no earth or heaven—only herself in a space of warm, saturating water, floating on water; herself, a cormorant with a fish, and the god of the universe. In his eyes, deep and unreadable and fascinating like the black lake-water, she was about to drown. He came towards her. She felt her hands taken. The face, impending, intent, was close to hers. The mouth, a calm flower in the rain, was stretched out to her. She offered herself to the terror of his mouth and the fierce and shining infinity that looked out of his eyes. There was no person in them, only a stupendous power. Yuan had vanished; what held her was not Yuan. Her own body, her own person, seemed also to dissolve and stream away in the rain. There was a sudden blinding drive, a hurricane embrace of rain, and in the midst of it his small mouth was a spot of fire. 41 Next day they climbed up among the crags in gusty weather, and as evening drew on they were overtaken by a shower. There was a mountain temple by a torrent in the shadow of a rock. They crossed the torrent by a bridge and took shelter. While Yuan contemplated a bronze image of Kwannon, Lychnis looked out at the crags, the pines, the valley below where the torrent fell booming. Far away was the Lake and the island in a mist of rain. Or sometimes she watched Yuan. She had abandoned everything to him, and waited for what he might be about to command. She was living in the intoxication of what seemed an unending now, and made no conjectures as to what might happen when now ended. All day their talk had been of the regions where he had taken her with the power of his mind (and where she had followed easily), of tree life, of insect life (a weird region), of chill regions beyond, out of which life takes origin. This seemed to her cold talk for lovers, and she fancied she was ready that it should become warmer. She called to him: “Yuan.” His voice answered from within: “Lychnis.”