“Not glad?” The Savage looked at her reproachfully; then suddenly fell on his knees before her and, taking Lenina’s hand, reverently kissed it. “Not glad? Oh, if you only knew,” he whispered and, venturing to raise his eyes to her face, “Admired Lenina,” he went on, “indeed the top of admiration, worth what’s dearest in the world.” She smiled at him with a luscious tenderness. “Oh, you so perfect” (she was leaning towards him with parted lips), “so perfect and so peerless are created” (nearer and nearer) “of every creature’s best.” Still nearer. The Savage suddenly scrambled to his feet. “That’s why,” he said speaking with averted face, “I wanted to do something first … I mean, to show I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever really be that. But at any rate to show I wasn’t absolutely un-worthy. I wanted to do something.”

“Why should you think it necessary…” Lenina began, but left the sentence unfinished. There was a note of irritation in her voice…

“At Malpais,” the Savage was incoherently mumbling, “you had to bring her the skin of a mountain lion–I mean, when you wanted to marry some one. Or else a wolf.”

“There aren’t any lions in England,” Lenina almost snapped.

“And even if there were,” the Savage added, with sudden contemptuous resentment, “people would kill them out of helicopters, I suppose, with poison gas or something. I wouldn’t do that, Lenina.” He squared his shoulders, he ventured to look at her and was met with a stare of annoyed incomprehension. Confused, “I’ll do anything,” he went on, more and more incoherently. “Anything you tell me. There be some sports are painful–you know. But their labour delight in them sets off. That’s what I feel. I mean I’d sweep the floor if you wanted.”

“But we’ve got vacuum cleaners here,” said Lenina in bewilderment. “It isn’t necessary.”

“No, of course it isn’t necessary. But some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone. I’d like to undergo something nobly. Don’t you see?”

“But if there are vacuum cleaners …”

“That’s not the point.”

“And Epsilon Semi-Morons to work them,” she went on, “well, really, why?”

“Why? But for you, for you. Just to show that I …”

“And what on earth vacuum cleaners have got to do with lions …”

“To show how much …”

“Or lions with being glad to see me …” She was getting more and more exasperated.

“How much I love you, Lenina,” he brought out almost desperately.

An emblem of the inner tide of startled elation, the blood rushed up into Lenina’s cheeks. “Do you mean it, John?”

“But I hadn’t meant to say so,” cried the Savage, clasping his hands in a kind of agony. “Not until … Listen, Lenina; in Malpais people get married.”

“Get what?” The irritation had begun to creep back into her voice. What was he talking about now?

“For always. They make a promise to live together for always.”

“What a horrible idea!” Lenina was genuinely shocked.

“Outliving beauty’s outward with a mind that doth renew swifter than blood decays.”

“What?”

“It’s like that in Shakespeare too. ‘If thou cost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite …’”

“For Ford’s sake, John, talk sense. I can’t understand a word you say. First it’s vacuum cleaners; then it’s knots. You’re driving me crazy.” She jumped up and, as though afraid that he might run away from her physically, as well as with his mind, caught him by the wrist. “Answer me this question: do you really like me, or don’t you?”

Extract contributed by Ong Kok Wah