They stayed that way for awhile because neither Denver nor Sethe knew how not to: how to stop and not love the look or feelof the lips that kept on kissing. Then Sethe, grabbing Beloved's hair and blinking rapidly, separatedherself. She later believed that it was because the girl's breath was exactly like new milk that shesaid to her, stern and frowning, "You too old for that."She looked at Denver, and seeing panic about to become something more, stood up quickly,breaking the tableau apart.

　　"Come on up! Up!" Sethe waved the girls to their feet. As they left the Clearing they looked prettymuch the same as they had when they had come: Sethe in the lead, the girls a ways back. All silentas before, but with a difference. Sethe was bothered, not because of the kiss, but because, justbefore it, when she was feeling so fine letting Beloved massage away the pain, the fingers she wasloving and the ones that had soothed her before they strangled her had reminded her of somethingthat now slipped her mind. But one thing for sure, Baby Suggs had not choked her as first shethought. Denver was right, and walking in the dappled tree-light, clearer-headed now — away from the enchantment of the Clearing — Sethe remembered the tou ch of those fingers that sheknew better than her own. They had bathed her in sections, wrapped her womb, combed her hair,oiled her nipples, stitched her clothes, cleaned her feet, greased her back and dropped just aboutanything they were doing to massage Sethe's nape when, especially in the early days, her spiritsfell down under the weight of the things she remembered and those she did not: schoolteacherwriting in ink she herself had made while his nephews played on her; the face of the woman in afelt hat as she rose to stretch in the field. If she lay among all the hands in the world, she wouldknow Baby Suggs' just as she did the good hands of the whitegirl looking for velvet. But foreighteen years she had lived in a house full of touches from the other side. And the thumbs thatpressed her nape were the same. Maybe that was where it had gone to. After Paul D beat it out of124, maybe it collected itself in the Clearing. Reasonable, she thought.

　　Why she had taken Denver and Beloved with her didn't puzzle her now — at the time it seemedimpulse, with a vague wish for protection. And the girls had saved her, Beloved so agitated shebehaved like a two-year-old.

　　Like a faint smell of burning that disappears when the fire is cut off or the window opened for abreeze, the suspicion that the girl's touch was also exactly like the baby's ghost dissipated. It wasonly a tiny disturbance anyway — not strong enough to divert her from the ambition welling in hernow: she wanted Paul D. No matter what he told and knew, she wanted him in her life. More thancommemorating Halle, that is what she had come to the Clearing to figure out, and now it wasfigured. Trust a............