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 cloth 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?"
There was a moment's silence; then, in a very low voice, "I love you more than anything in the world," he said.
"Then why on earth didn't you say so?" she cried, and so intense was her exasperation that she drove her sharp nails into the skin of his wrist.
"Instead of drivelling away about knots and vacuum cleaners and lions, and making me miserable for weeks and weeks."
She released his hand and flung it angrily away from her.
"If I didn't like you so much," she said, "I'd be furious with you."
And suddenly her arms were round his neck; he felt her lips soft against his own.
So deliciously soft, so warm and electric that inevitably he found himself thinking of the embraces in Three Weeks in a Helicopter.