Gerald could not save her from it. He, his body, his motion, his
life--it was the same ticking, the same twitching across the dial, a
horrible mechanical twitching forward over the face of the hours. What
were his kisses, his embraces. She could hear their tick-tack,
tick-tack.
Ha--ha--she laughed to herself, so frightened that she was trying to
laugh it off--ha--ha, how maddening it was, to be sure, to be sure!
Then, with a fleeting self-conscious motion, she wondered if she would
be very much surprised, on rising in the morning, to realise that her
hair had turned white. She had FELT it turning white so often, under
the intolerable burden of her thoughts, und her sensations. Yet there
it remained, brown as ever, and there she was herself, looking a
picture of health.
Perhaps she was healthy. Perhaps it was only her unabateable health
that left her so exposed to the truth. If she were sickly she would
have her illusions, imaginations. As it was, there was no escape. She
must always see and know and never escape. She could never escape.
There she was, placed before the clock-face of life. And if she turned
round as in a railway station, to look at the bookstall, still she
could see, with her very spine, she could see the clock, always the
great white clock-face. In vain she fluttered the leaves of books, or
made statuettes in clay. She knew she was not REALLY reading. She was
not REALLY working. She was watching the fingers twitch across the
eternal, mechanical, monotonous clock-face of time. She never really
lived, she only watched. Indeed, she was like a little, twelve-hour
clock, vis-a-vis with the enormous clock of eternity--there she was,
like Dignity and Impudence, or Impudence and Dignity.
The picture pleased her. Didn't her face really look like a clock
dial--rather roundish and often pale, and impassive. She would have got
up to look, in the mirror, but the thought of the sight of her own
face, that was like a twelve-hour clock-dial, filled her with such deep
terror, that she hastened to think of something else.
Oh, why wasn't somebody kind to her? Why wasn't there somebody who
would take her in their arms, and hold her to their breast, and give
her rest, pure, deep, healing rest. Oh, why wasn't there somebody to
take her in their arms and fold her safe and perfect, for sleep. She
wanted so much this perfect enfolded sleep. She lay always so
unsheathed in sleep. She would lie always unsheathed in sleep,
unrelieved, unsaved. Oh, how could she bear it, this endless unrelief,
this eternal unrelief.