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His words issue pressed, condensed, enduring.
All excesses beyond that norm are
vanity. I am ready now tojoin men and women on the stairs, my peers. They swept
the beach with steel blue and diamond-tippedwater.
I feel a thousandcapacities
spring up in me. Here was the boss of a chair; here the bulk of a cupboard.
But
it is only aservant, bringing glasses.
I shall edge behind them, said Rhoda, as
if I saw someone Iknow. To speak, about wine even to the waiter,is to bring
about an explosion.
Each time the door opens I am interrupted.
There are
nolights in any of these houses.
Ihave seen the door open and shut twenty times
already; each timethe suspense sharpens. The only people in the streets are
poorpeople hurrying. It is astigma burnt on my quivering flesh by a cowled man
with a red-hotiron. Now let us say, brutally and directly, what is in our
minds, saidNeville. Down from our heads veils fell, said Rhoda. Are we not
lovely sitting together here, I in my satin; he in blackand white?
I am
conscious offlux, of disorder; of annihilation and despair. His hair is untidy,
but he does not know it.
Night has wheeled a little further over the
chimney-pots. The sheepgather in the middle of the field.
I think also that our
bodies are in truth naked. He mixes the salad with his own hands for
someprivileged guest. They tapped furiously, methodically,until the shell broke
and something slimy oozed from the crack.
Draughts of oblivion shall quench my
agitation.
They swooped suddenlyfrom the lilac bough or the fence.
Each time
the door opens I am interrupted.
O come, I say to this one, rippling gold from
head toheels.
I pick ablue flower and fix it, standing on tiptoe to reach him,
in hiscoat.
The authentics, likeLouis, like Rhoda, exist most completely in
solitude.
I am conscious offlux, of disorder; of annihilation and despair.
Now
I think, next time it opensthe whole of my life will be changed. I am numbed to
tolerance and acquiescence. They toss their pictures once paintedface downward
on the field.
I pick ablue flower and fix it, standing on tiptoe to reach him,
in hiscoat. The case is handsome; but it blocks up thehall.
Bells rang
punctually, said Susan, maids scuffled and giggled.
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