oneself, quite suddenly, as a clumsy oaf scrambles to his feet, leaning towards nothing at all—well, there is a reason, even with half a gramme of soma circulating in one’s blood-stream, a genuine reason for annoyance.

‘At Malpais,’ the Savage was incoherently mumbling, ‘you had to bring her the skin of a mountain lion—I mean, when you wanted to marry some one. Or else a wolf.’

‘There aren’t any lions in England,’ Lenina almost snapped.

‘And even if there were,’ the Savage added, with sudden contemptuous resentment, ‘people would kill them out of helicopters, I suppose, with poison gas or something. I wouldn’t do that, Lenina.’ He squared his shoulders, he ventured to look at her and was met with a stare of annoyed incomprehension. Confused, ‘I’ll do anything,’ he went on, more and more incoherently. ‘Anything you tell me. There be some sports are painful—you know. But their labour delight in them sets off. That’s what I feel. I mean I’d sweep the floor if you wanted.’

‘But we’ve got vacuum cleaners here,’ said Lenina in bewilderment. ‘It isn’t necessary.’

‘No, of course it isn’t necessary. But some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone. I’d like to undergo something nobly. Don’t you see?’

‘But if there are vacuum cleaners …’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘And Epsilon Semi-Morons to work them,’ she went on, ‘well, really, why?’

‘Why? But for you, for you. Just to show that I …’

‘And what on earth vacuum cleaners have got to do with lions …’

‘To show how much …’

‘Or lions with being glad to see me …’ She was getting more and more exasperated.

‘How much I love you, Lenina,’ he brought out almost desperately.

An emblem of the inner tide of startled elation, the blood rushed up into Lenina’s cheeks. ‘Do you mean it, John?’

‘But I hadn’t meant to say so,’ cried the Savage, clasping his hands in a kind of agony. ‘Not until … Listen, Lenina; in Malpais people get married.’

‘Get what?’ The irritation had begun to creep back into her voice. What was he talking about now?

‘For always. They make a promise to live together for always.’

‘What a horrible idea!’ Lenina was genuinely shocked.

‘Outliving beauty’s outward, with a mind that doth renew swifter than blood decays.’

‘What?’

‘It’s like that in Shakespeare too. “If thou dost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite …”’