A similar design of a mouth was sufficient to retransmit the interrupted current of sensations, to recreate a contact by way of the past receptivity, like a channel conducting perfectly only a part of the former ecstasy through the channel of the senses arousing vibrations and sensibilities formerly awakened by a total love or total desire for the entire personality.

The senses created river beds of responses formed in part from the sediments, the waste, the overflow from the original experience. A partial resemblance could stir what remained of the imperfectly rooted-out love which had not died a natural death.

Whatever was torn out of the body, as out of the earth, cut, violently uprooted, left such deceptive, such lively roots below the surface, all ready to bloom again under an artificial association, by a grafting of sensation, given new life through this graft of memory.

Out of the loss of John, Sabina retained such musical vibration below visibility which made her insensitive to men totally different from John and prepared her for a continuation of her interrupted desire for John.

When she saw the slender body of Donald, the same small nose, the head carried on a long-stemmed neck, the echo of the old violent emotions was strong enough to appear like a new desire.

She did not observe the differences, that Donald's skin was even more transparent, his hair silkier, that he did not spring, but glided, dragging his feet a little, that his voice was passive, indolent, slightly whining.

At first Sabina thought he was gently clowning by his parodies of women's feathery gestures, by a smile so deliberately seductive imitating the corolla's involutionary attractions.

She smiled indulgently when he lay down on the couch preparing such a floral arrangement of limbs, head, hands as to suggest a carnal banquet.

She laughed when he trailed his phrases like southern vines, or practiced sudden exaggerated severities as children do when they play charades of the father's absurd arrogances, of the mother's hot-house exudations of charm.

When Sabina crossed the street, she nourished herself upon the gallant smile of the policeman who stopped the traffic for her, she culled the desire of the man who pushed the revolving door for her, she gathered the flash of adoration from the drug clerk: "Are you an actress?" She picked the bouquet of the shoe salesman trying on her shoes: "Are you a dancer?" As she sat in the bus she received the shafts of the sun as a personal, intimate visit. She felt a humorous connivance with the truck driver who had to pull the brakes violently before her impulsive passages, and who did so smiling because it was Sabina and they were glad to see her crossing their vision.

But she considered this feminine sustenance like pollen. To her amazement, Donald, walking beside her, assumed these offerings were intended for him.