Women in Love

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.