“What does?”
“The other river, the black river. We always consider the silver river of life, rolling on and quickening all the world to a brightness, on and on to heaven, flowing into a bright eternal sea, a heaven of angels thronging. But the other is our real reality—”
“But what other? I don’t see any other,” said Ursula.
“It is your reality, nevertheless,” he said; “that dark river of dissolution. You see it rolls in us just as the other rolls—the black river of corruption. And our flowers are of this—our sea-born Aphrodite, all our white phosphorescent flowers of sensuous perfection, all our reality, nowadays.”
“You mean that Aphrodite is really deathly?” asked Ursula.
“I mean she is the flowering mystery of the death-process, yes,” he replied. “When the stream of synthetic creati
