So learn to live on farce. To savour its venom, like the Eastern King, dose and larger dose, until one can relish and thrive on a diet of acid that would blast the normal heart. Isn’t it this very disproportion that makes the glory? There would be no laughter in a perfect world. Ever after, digesting his secret poison, he would search other faces too for the sign of that healing bane.
He felt that Phyllis was about to say something. He erased his mind, to be ready to receive her thought; as one parent holds out arms to take the baby from the other.
“I think she’s rather wonderful. I think I could....”
Joy and clean gusto, the blessed hilarity of living! Why, it was so divinely simple, if Phyl would care to understand....
“Dearest, if you ... if you only....”
The half-tamed leopard stirred and showed a yellow spark. George’s mind, uneasily changing itself, made swift cusping arcs like the tracks of a turning car. Ruth came rustling from the bathroom. She was amazed to see them doing a foxtrot together.
“Good-morning!” he said. “Perhaps you didn’t know, this is our wedding day.”
“Hurry up,” he whispered to Phyllis. “Grab the bath while you can. I’ll get dressed, I’ll just have time to mend that railing before breakfast.”
XXI
JOYCE had slipped out early. There was something unbearable in the house’s morning stir, its sense of preparation for living in which she would have no part.