ODD, ODD, odd, was Lenina’s verdict on Bernard Marx. "Quite wonderful," he repeated but the only thing he could think of was Morgana’s eyebrow. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her shining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault. He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the common electric glare with a self-consciousness intensified to the pitch of agony. Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into the Greater Being alone even in Morgana’s embrace–much more alone, indeed, more hopelessly himself than he had ever been in his life before. He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the service began–more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satiety. "Yes, I thought it was wonderful," he lied and looked away the sight of her transfigured face was at once an accusation and an ironical reminder of his own separateness. "Didn’t you think it was wonderful?" she insisted, looking into Bernard’s face with those supernaturally shining eyes. She was full, she was made perfect, she was still more than merely herself. For the Solidarity Service had given as well as taken, drawn off only to replenish. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. "Wasn’t it simply wonderful?" She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement–for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. "Wasn’t it wonderful?" said Fifi Bradlaugh. They were standing on the roof Big Henry had just sung eleven. "Orgy-porgy …" Tenderly the deep Voice crooned and cooed in the red twilight it was as though some enormous negro dove were hovering benevolently over the now prone or supine dancers.
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