So it is when a man, with two legs and a penis, a belly and a mouth begins to shout about being free. One wants to ask: which bit do you refer to? There’s a cock and there’s the hen, and their two egos or individualities seem to stay apart without friction. They never coo at one another, nor hold each other’s hand. I never see her sitting on his lap and being petted. True, sometimes he calls for her to come and eat a titbit. And sometimes he dashes at her and walks over her for a moment. She doesn’t seem to mind. I never hear her squawking: “_Don’t you think you can walk over me!_” Yet she’s by no means downtrodden. She’s just herself, and seems to have a good time: and she doesn’t like it if he is missing. So there is this peculiar togetherness about them. You can’t call it love. It would be too ridiculous. What then? As far as I can see, it is desire. And the desire has a fluctuating intensity, but it is always there. His desire is always towards her, even when he has absolutely forgotten her. And by the way she puts her feet down, I can see she always walks in her plumes of desirableness, even when she’s going broody. The mystery about her, is her strange undying desirableness. You can see it in every step she takes. She is desirable. And this is the breath of her life. It is the same with Susan. The queer cowy mystery of her is her changeless cowy desirableness. She is far, alas, from any bull. She never even remotely dreams of a bull, save at rare and brief periods. Yet her whole being and motion is that of being desirable: or else fractious. It seems to unite her with the very air, and the plants and trees. Even to the sky and the trees and the grass and the running stream, she is subtly, delicately and _purely_ desirable, in cowy desirability. It is her cowy mystery. Then her fractiousness is the fireworks of her desirableness. To me she is fractious, tiresome, and a faggot. Yet the subtle desirableness is in her, for me. As it is in a brown hen, or even a sow. It is like a peculiar charm: the creature’s femaleness, her desirableness. It is her sex, no doubt: but so subtle as to have nothing to do with function. It is a mystery, like a delicate flame. It would be false to call it love, because love complicates the ego. The ego is always concerned in love. But in the frail, subtle desirousness of the true male, towards everything female, and the equally frail, indescribable desirability of every female for every male, lies the real clue to the equating, or the _relating_, of things which otherwise are incommensurable.