The world, for him, rocked on a snapped foot; the shattered and the razor-bedded sea, the green skewered hulk with a stuffing of eyes, the red sea socket itself and the dead ships crawling around the rim, ached through the gristles and the bone, the bitten patch, the scaled and bubbling menses, the elastic tissues of the deep, the barbed, stained and scissored, the clotted-with-mucus, sawn and thorny flesh, ached on a never-ending ache. As on a crucifix, and turning on her nails, the skinny earth, each country pricked to the bladder, each racked sea torn in the tide, hung despairing in a limp space. What should the cruel Lucytre, who drags ghost Davies over a timeless agony, smooth on her wounds? Rust and salt and vinegar and alcohol, the juice of the upas tree, the scorpion’s ointment and a sponge soaked in dropsy.

The Holy Six stood up.

They took the six glasses of milk from Mr. Owen’s tray.

And will the holy gentlemen honour us for the night?

A life in Mrs. Owen was stirring behind the comfortable little wall. She smiled at Mr. Davies, this time with an intimate wrinkling of the corners of her mouth; Mr. Owen smiled over his shoulder; and, caught between two smiles and understanding neither, he felt his own lips curl. They shared a mysterious smile, and the Six stood silently behind them.

My child, said Mrs. Owen from her corner, shall be greater than all great men.

Your child is my child, said Mr. Owen.

And Mr. Davies, as suddenly as in the first bewilderment he had gone down upon his knees to pray, leant forward and patted the woman’s hand. He would have laid his hands upon the fold of her frock from hip to hip, blessing the unborn under the cotton shroud, but the fear of the power of her eyes held his hand.

Your child is my child, said Mr. Davies.

The ghost in him had coupled with the virgin, the virgin ghost that all the great stirrings of her husband’s love had left as whole as a flower in a cup of milk.

But Mr. Owen burst out laughing; he threw back his head, and laughed at the mating shadows, at the oil in the clear, glass bag of the lamp. That there could be seed, shuffling to the spring of heat, in the old man’s glands. That there could be life in the ancient loins. Father of the jawbones of asses and the hair-thighed camel’s fleas, Mr. Davies swayed before him in a mist of laughter. He could blow the old man up the sky with a puff of his lungs.

He is your child, said Mrs. Owen.

She smiled at the shadow between them, the eunuch shadow of a man that fitted between the curving of their shoulders.