He could not look away. He rose and lifted the lamp-shade, throwing the
pitiless light on the thing that fascinated him. She stirred in her
sleep, turning a little from the light. He bent over her pillow and
peered into her face. She woke suddenly, as if his gaze had drawn her
from sleep; and from the look in her eyes he judged a little of the
horror his own must have betrayed.
He shrank back guiltily, replaced the shade, and sat down in the chair
at the foot of the bed. She looked at him. His whole frame trembled; his
eyes were blurred with tears; the parted lips drooped with weakness,
bitterness, and unappeased desire. Did she know that in that moment the
hunger and thirst after righteousness raged more fiercely than any
earthly appetite? It seemed to him that in her look he read pity and
perfect comprehension. He hid his face in his hands.
After that night he began to have a nervous dread of going into her
room. He was always afraid that she would "say something." By this time
his senses, too, were morbidly acute. The sight and smell of drugs,
dressings, and disinfectants afflicted him with an agony of sensation.
There was no escaping these things in the little flat, and he could not
help associating his wife with them: it seemed as if a crowd of trivial
and sordid images was blotting out the delicate moral impressions he had
once had. Tyson was paying the penalty of having lived the life of the
senses; his brain had become their servant, and he was horrified to find
that he could not command its finest faculties at pleasure.
There was no disguising the detestable truth. He could attain no further.
From those heights of beautiful emotion where he had disported himself
lately there could be no gradual lapse into indifference. It was a
furious break-neck descent to the abominable end--repulsion and infinite
dislike, tempered at first by a little remnant of pity. Every day her
presence was becoming more intolerable to him. But, for the few moments
that he perforce spent with her, he was more elaborately attentive than
ever. As his tenderness declined his manner became more scrupulously
respectful, (She would have given anything to have heard him say "You
little fool," as in the careless days of the old life.) He had no
illusions left. Not even to himself could he continue that pleasant
fiction of the strong man with feelings too deep for utterance. Still,
there were certain delicacies: if his love was dead he must do his best
to bury it decently--anyhow, anywhere, out of his sight and hers.
He noticed now that, as he carried her from one room to the other, she
turned her face from his, as she had turned it from the light.