She nods her head. “Over and over again.”
“Just like me! I did it over and over again. I have done it hundreds of thousands of times in this room.”
“It’s to be hoped it was pleasant to do, deary.”
“It was pleasant to do!”
He says this with a savage air, and a spring or start at her. Quite unmoved she retouches and replenishes the contents of the bowl with her little spatula. Seeing her intent upon the occupation, he sinks into his former attitude.
“It was a journey, a difficult and dangerous journey. That was the subject in my mind. A hazardous and perilous journey, over abysses where a slip would be destruction. Look down, look down! You see what lies at the bottom there?”
He has darted forward to say it, and to point at the ground, as though at some imaginary object far beneath. The woman looks at him, as his spasmodic face approaches close to hers, and not at his pointing. She seems to know what the influence of her perfect quietude would be; if so, she has not miscalculated it, for he subsides again.
“Well; I have told you I did it here hundreds of thousands of times. What do I say? I did it millions and billions of times. I did it so often, and through such vast expanses of time, that when it was really done, it seemed not worth the doing, it was done so soon.”
“That’s the journey you have been away upon,” she quietly remarks.
He glares at her as he smokes; and then, his eyes becoming filmy, answers: “That’s the journey.”