rent had been torn in him; like a victim that is torn open and
given to the heavens, so he had been torn apart and given to Gudrun. How should
he close again? This wound, this strange, infinitely-sensitive opening of his
soul, where he was exposed, like an open flower, to all the universe, and in
which he was given to his complement, the other, the unknown, this wound, this
disclosure, this unfolding of his own covering, leaving him incomplete, limited,
unfinished, like an open flower under the sky, this was his cruellest joy. Why
then should he forego it? Why should he close up and become impervious, immune,
like a partial thing in a sheath, when he had broken forth, like a seed that has
germinated, to issue forth in being, embracing the unrealised heavens.
    He would keep the unfinished bliss of his own yearning even through the
torture she inflicted upon him. A strange obstinacy possessed him. He would not
go away from her whatever she said or did. A strange, deathly yearning carried
him along with her. She was the determinating influence of his very being,
though she treated him with contempt, repeated rebuffs and denials, still he
would never be gone, since in being near her, even, he felt the quickening, the
going forth in him, the release, the knowledge of his own limitation and the
magic of the promise, as well as the mystery of his own destruction and
annihilation.
    She tortured the open heart of him even as he turned to her. And she was
tortured herself. It may have been her will was stronger. She felt, with horror,
as if he tore at the bud of her heart, tore it open, like an irreverent
persistent being. Like a boy who pulls off a fly's wings, or tears open a bud to
see what is in the flower, he tore at her privacy, at her very life, he would
destroy her as an immature bud, torn open, is destroyed.
    She might open towards him, a long while hence, in her dreams, when she was
a pure spirit. But now she was not to be violated and ruined. She closed against
him fiercely.
    They climbed together, at evening, up the high slope, to see the sun set. In
the finely breathing, keen wind they stood and watched the yellow sun sink in
crimson and disappear. Then in the east the peaks and ridges glowed with living
rose, incandescent like immortal flowers against a brown-purple sky,