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collapsing roof of the summer-house. It was shaped like a pagoda, picturesque but vulnerable, and the fierce wind blew it away. For a long time there was no answer to the bell they rang, but at last the maid came to clear up the broken vase, and the spilt water and flowers. Her eyes were red, and the young man asked her what was the matter. “Some people have drowned,” she said. “The waves are very big tonight. Their boat was overturned.” The maid looked wonderingly at the lump of flint stone, lying where it had fallen. “Leave it,” said the young man. “It will be a souvenir.” She picked it up, though, and gave it to him, and he weighed it in his hand, wonderingly. He could not imagine the force that had torn it from the mountain and impelled it into their room.
    She asked later: “Is my breast softer than the stone?” He nodded, resting his head on it to prove its softness. They heard distinctly, yet distantly, the noises of troubled people scurrying through the corridors; and when they rang for dinner they were told they would have to make do with sandwiches, as all the waiters were helping with the victims of the flood. They were famished, and he asked if they could have some chocolate sent up with the sandwiches. He fondled her breast that was so much softer than the flint, and bent to suck the nipple. The young woman yearned towards the lips that sucked her; the orange nipple was being drawn further and further out. She ran her fingers through his short curly hair as he went on sucking. They heard the sound of something breaking—perhaps a window or crockery—and shouts. The noises of panic. Also they heard guests crying. It reminded her of her baby crying, and she stroked the man’s hair. Her breast seemed swollen like a drum, to three times its normal size. The wind flailed against the window. He took his lips from her breast to say anxiously, “I hope it won’t break.”She directed her nipple again into his mouth and said, “I don’t think so. It swelled like this when I was feeding my son.”
    The hotel was swaying in the gale, and she thought she was on an ocean liner; she heard the creaking of a ship’s timbers, smelt the salt tang through the open porthole, and, from the galley, the faint smell of the evening meal, tinged with seasick. They would have to dine with the captain, and he would ask her to sing in the ship’s concert. Perhaps they would never reach port. She felt close to tears because her nipple was being drawn so far out it began to be painful; pain was concentrating there, and yet in a way the nipple did not belong to her, it was floating away, a raw appendix removed by the ship’s doctor. She wanted him to rest but he would not. To her relief his lips moved to her other breast, and began drawing that nipple out, though it was already quite swollen from its sympathy for the twin. “Are they tender?” he said at last; and she said, “Yes, of course, they love each other.” She heard the porthole in the next cabin along, behind their bunk, shatter.
    With his hand he opened her vagina, and forced his penis in so hard she jolted back. He lifted himself to look down at where he had so mysteriously disappeared into her body. He made himself appear and disappear at will. There was the lightest of light touches on her hair, and when she put her hand there she touched something dry and papery. It was a maple leaf, which must have blown in unnoticed when the storm began, before the stone had been thrown in. She showed it to him, and he smiled, but his smile was caught back in a grimace, from the pleasure of thrusting in and out and of holding himself on the verge of coming. She put her hand behind his buttocks and stroked him with the dry and papery maple leaf. He tensed, and shuddered.
    The light rain had ceased, the wind had dropped; they openedthe window and walked out on to the balcony. He held his friend by the waist, and they watched the storm clouds part, revealing stars