Tall white flesh, scabbarded in black ... and in prayer. Lips washed clean of liquor, scrubbed lips, thin ... very thin. Hands corroded in cleanliness against the nape of her neck. Odorless, fireless.... Fanny flung her arms about him.... Shoulders pointed forward, thrusting away a world. She clasped him close. “Harry--Harry,” she cried. “O I am so glad you are----” she stopped. She lay swaying in his arms, clasping him tighter, tighter. A faint moan rose from her parted lips as her arms clasped tighter.... They sat and looked at each other. “You have loved me, Fanny.” “Yes ... yes.” “You are my wife.” She could say no word. She could feel no thing to turn into a word. She was a wisp of cloud: beneath her a weathercock stood still. Harry moveless pinned like a weathercock upon a bloody spike ... under a sky with one wisp of cloud. From a fringed green horizon, memory like a wind moved up to her. --I love him. I serve him. I have dedicated my new free strength to that. I have sworn how I was wanting, how I failed. Life now together! “You know about me,” he said. “I know you have come back, and I love you ... love you.” “I must tell you all ... all the sin. You are my wife.” “Tell me now, only that you are mine.” “I am yours: for you are my wife since in my sinning you have loved me, Fanny. God rewards me. You were there, awaiting my conversion.” “We are wedded at last. Do not use words I cannot understand.” “You must hear all my sins....” Why did she feel:--He is satisfied with his words? “I know my sins. God has put upon me, as my way of being cleansed, to speak my sins. As they come forth from my mouth, they cleanse--God has made a miracle in that they cleanse. I am washed clean, speaking them. Already scores of boys, young men, hearing them, are clean. All their horror, each detail of my sins, is a hand washing clean.” Why did she feel:--Speaking, he moves away? --I am jealous of your sins. What are sins? “Tell me at once, then, Harry. Then we can bury them. Then we can start to build. Then you can come and hold me.” “I was away more than two years....” --He has come back to hold me.... I will hold him so he understands he has come back to hold me.... O to be held!... He has never held me. We were too wise, we fools, to hold each other. In a plunging world ... O my God how the world veers and plunges ... what fools not to hold each other. He spoke, he was very eloquent and sure, dwelling again with his sins. He was warm in them. When he looked out from his hot sins to his wife, his eyes were colder. --Hold me. Hold me! Let me hold you. Come plant your hand in my heart. He spoke, dwelling warm in his sins. --Damn your sins! He ended. He came to her and knelt once more. Not feeling him, she let him. “Fanny, my dearest, my wife, my wife ... do you forgive me?” Not feeling him there, she was very quiet. “I do not feel, my love, that there is anything to forgive.”