NEVER—NOT WHEN the prince kissed the princess, nor the priest laid the host upon one's tongue, not when Madeleine gripped the despondent member of M. Jouy, nor when Papa held Maman in the dark, not the brothers and sisters pressing their small, hot hands against the sleeping girl—has a person touched another with such tender concentration.
And in his touch there is not the kindness, the abnegation, of the abbot tending to the wounded Michel: here, there are no ministrations, no saints; no blazing suns, no attendant moons. There is only this perfect reciprocity—two stars in orbit, two flowers unfolding—an exchange of pleasure unlike that she has ever seen.
She watches how his fingers float over the crooked tie, the pale throat, the apple bumping along its narrow path, and it is as if this gesture has never before existed, has only now been invented by dint of his hunger. He must teach his hands, his fingers, to do that which is utterly strange to them. And to defy habit in this way—what force is great enough? How shabby, how halfhearted, her own mutiny now seems. So what force? Madeleine does not know. She knows only that the sight of it could impale her. That she could part the curtains and watch, swooning, as the gesture is performed again and again.