He fell on his knees in front of her and she let her tousled forehead sink down till it rested against his; and there they remained for a while, their two skulls in a happy trance of relaxed contact, full of unspoken reciprocities, like the skulls of two animals out at pasture, or the branches of two trees exhausted by a storm.

Wolf was conscious of abandoning himself to a vast undisturbed peace⁠—a peace without thought, aim, or desire⁠—a peace that flowed over him from the dim reservoirs of prenatal life, lulling him, soothing him, hypnotizing him⁠—obliterating everything from his consciousness except a faint delicious feeling that everything had been obliterated.

It was his mother herself who broke the spell. She raised her hands to his head and held it back by his stubbly straw-coloured hair, pressing, as she did so, her own glowing tear-stained cheeks against his chin, and finally kissing him with a hot, intense, tyrannous kiss.