“The mind must be open, unperturbed, empty of irrelevant things, quiet. There’s no room for thoughts in a half-shut, cluttered mind. And thoughts won’t enter a noisy mind; they’re shy, they remain in their obscure hiding-places below the surface, where they can’t be got at, so long as the mind is full and noisy. Most of us pass through life without knowing that they’re there at all. If one wants to lure them out, one must clear a space for them, one must open the mind wide and wait. And there must be no irrelevant preoccupations prowling around the doors. One must free oneself of those.”
“I suppose I’m one of the irrelevant preoccupations,” said Mary Thriplow, after a little pause.
Calamy laughed, but did not deny it.
“If that’s so,” said Mary, “why did you make love to me?”
Calamy did not reply. Why indeed? He had often asked that question himself.
“I think it would be best,” she said, after a silence, “if we were to make an end.” She would go away, she would grieve in solitude.
“Make an end?” Calamy repeated. He desired it, of course, above everything—to make an end, to be free. But he found himself adding, with a kind of submarine laughter below the surface of his voice. “Do you think you can make an end?”
“Why not?”
“Suppose I don’t allow you to?” Did she imagine, then, that she wasn’t in his power, that he couldn’t make her obey his will whenever he desired? “I don’t allow you,” he said, and his voice quivered with the rising mirth. He bent over her and began to kiss her on the mouth; with his hands he held and caressed her. What an insanity, he said to himself.
“No, no.” Mary struggled a little; but in the end she allowed herself to be overcome. She lay still, trembling, like one who has been tortured on the rack.