Part 31

At last it was done. Stubborn confessional!

She laughed at the daubed papers that had not wanted to die.

She turned out the light and went once more into the bedroom. She opened the window wide.

The balmy night swept over her head into the room. Street slumbered. Brutal lines of the street seemed broken into curves: its hard stillness rose now and swayed, fell murmuring beyond her eyes.

Cornelia leaned heavy on her arms. She could feel the weight of her body against her elbows. This was the night and this was the world. The one world she had ever known: the one night also.

Why had all of it been? She saw herself. She must have been above and beyond herself; she saw herself from the back. She was leaning there, a slender girl, out of the window. She was a narrow form, swathed in warm brown silk-brocade, with a neck that was a little too long for such slight shoulders. And her elbows ached. And the window framing her led into the world. It was a round place: it went twirling about in interminable ether. It flung near blazing monsters like the Sun, that also were lost in the black, blind spaces so that their conflagrations were sparks flecking the universal slumber. Upon this twirling ball was life. Everywhere she looked, was life. One spot of earth was a city of creation, one drop of water was a multitudinous welter. Here, somehow, she. She could look beyond herself and the window and the gyring City. She could see the world and the stars and the Sun lost like specks in the universal slumber.

This was her yearning. Let her sleep! She was tired. Let her be one with slumber beyond creation. Out of slumber creation had come, creation which was a scum of eggs on a black flower. Let her brush it away. Let her brush it clean.

What she yearned was a thing more sure and real than world. Her eyes went out from behind where she stood yearning, passed the world in a flash. So small it was. Passed the stars that were dim above houses. The black Nothing was All. The stirrings of suns were flecks upon glow of black spaces.

She leaned there and yearned, and argued; she could not move.

She sobbed dryly.

She stayed there long. Then, in dim eyes, she left the window, she threw herself upon the bed.

She fell asleep.

She awoke.

It was very dark. About her was nothing. About her was no obstruction. She was aware of her breathing as of an intruder. She rose from her bed. All of the weight was within, all of the clutter was within, all of the pain was within. She moved outside herself with a vast, sweet freedom, for outside her was nothing.

She went to the window and jumped out.

* * * * *

How long David had held Helen in his embrace, he did not know. It was almost like sleep: measureless. Now waking from her arms, he felt her there like a world in which he dwelt.

She was drawing herself away. She took his hand.

“You must go, now, Dear,” she said. “It is late, you know.”

She smiled up into his serious dazed face.

“You will come to-morrow to dinner, will you not?...” Still he said nothing. He was looking beyond her.

“I am so eager to have my family really know you.”

_1917-1918._

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

they paddling=> they paddled {pg 10}

short shift of him=> short shrift of him {pg 167}

paused momently=> paused momentarily {pg 287}

It has esstranged=> It has estranged {pg 305}