‘Sweet!’ said Lenina and, laying her hands on his shoulders, pressed herself against him. ‘Put your arms round me,’ she commanded. ‘Hug me till you drug me, honey.’ She too had poetry at her command, knew words that sang and were spells and beat drums. ‘Kiss me’; she closed her eyes, she let her voice sink to a sleepy murmur, ‘kiss me till I’m in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly …’

The Savage caught her by the wrists, tore her hands from his shoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm’s length.

‘Ow, you’re hurting me, you’re … oh!’ She was suddenly silent. Terror had made her forget the pain. Opening her eyes, she had seen his face—no, not his face, a ferocious stranger’s, pale, distorted, twitching with some insane, inexplicable fury. Aghast, ‘But what is it, John?’ she whispered. He did not answer, but only stared into her face with those mad eyes. The hands that held her wrists were trembling. He breathed deeply and irregularly. Faint almost to imperceptibility, but appalling, she suddenly heard the grinding of his teeth. ‘What is it?’ she almost screamed.

And as though awakened by her cry he caught her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Whore!’ he shouted. ‘Whore! Impudent strumpet!’

‘Oh, don’t, do-on’t,’ she protested in a voice made grotesquely tremulous by his shaking.

‘Whore!’

‘Plea-ease.’

‘Damned whore!’

‘A gra-amme is be-etter …’ she began.

The Savage pushed her away with such force that she staggered and fell. ‘Go,’ he shouted, standing over her menacingly, ‘get out of my sight or I’ll kill you.’ He clenched his fists.

Lenina raised her arm to cover her face. ‘No, please don’t, John …’

‘Hurry up. Quick!’

One arm still raised, and following his every movement with a terrified eye, she scrambled to her feet and still crouching, still covering her head, made a dash for the bathroom.

The noise of that prodigious slap by which her departure was accelerated was like a pistol-shot.

‘Ow!’ Lenina bounded forward.

Safely locked into the bathroom, she had leisure to take stock of her injuries. Standing with her back to the mirror, she twisted her head. Looking over her left shoulder she could see the imprint of an open hand standing out distinct and crimson on the pearly flesh. Gingerly she rubbed the wounded spot.

Outside, in the other room, the Savage was striding up and down, marching, marching to the drums and music of magical words. ‘The wren goes to’t, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight.’ Maddeningly they rumbled in his ears. ‘The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to’t with a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are Centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit. Beneath is all the fiends’. There’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie, pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination.’

‘John!’ ventured a small ingratiating voice from the bathroom. ‘John!’