SHE was tangled up in her own self-conceit, a
woman,
and her
passion could only flare through the meshes
towards other women, in
communion;
the
presence of a man made her recoil
and burn blue and cold, like the flame in a
miner’s lamp
when
the after-damp is around it.
Yet she seemed to know nothing about
it
and devoted
herself to her husband
and made him paint her nude, time after
time,
and each time it came out the same, a horrible sexless,
lifeless abstraction
of the female form, technically “ beautiful,” actually a
white
machine
drawing, more null than death.
And she was so pleased with it, she thought one
day it would
be
recognised as “ great.”
And he thought so too.
Nobody else did.