Suddenly he found himself face to face with a situation. It was as
simple as this: fatally simple. On the one hand, he knew he did not
want a further sensual experience--something deeper, darker, than
ordinary life could give. He remembered the African fetishes he had
seen at Halliday's so often. There came back to him one, a statuette
about two feet high, a tall, slim, elegant figure from West Africa, in
dark wood, glossy and suave. It was a woman, with hair dressed high,
like a melon-shaped dome. He remembered her vividly: she was one of his
soul's intimates. Her body was long and elegant, her face was crushed
tiny like a beetle's, she had rows of round heavy collars, like a
column of quoits, on her neck. He remembered her: her astonishing
cultured elegance, her diminished, beetle face, the astounding long
elegant body, on short, ugly legs, with such protuberant buttocks, so
weighty and unexpected below her slim long loins. She knew what he
himself did not know. She had thousands of years of purely sensual,
purely unspiritual knowledge behind her.
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