“I feel awfully free. Don’t you?”
This was so unexpected that her mind went quite blank. There seemed no possible reply that was worth making.
“I should like to lie in bed and laugh,” he said calmly.
Phyllis tried to think of something to laugh about. It suddenly struck her that there are days when one does not laugh at all. Evidently this was one of them. The world had swinked, and looped its wild orbit for uncountable ages, all to produce this latest moment of lucid afternoon: and yet what cause was there for mirth? But she felt that if she could produce a clear chime of amusement it would be a mannerly and attractive thing to do. She opened her mouth for it, but only managed a sort of satiric cackle.
“You mustn’t try to laugh,” he said. “It’s bad for you.”
She wondered whether she ought to pretend offence. Of course I’m not really offended: there’s something so gently impersonal about his rudenesses. In this dreadful vortex of life that seems to spin us round and round, how amazing to find someone so completely nonchalant, so ... so untouched by anxiety ... as though his mind had never been bruised. (When she found the right word she always liked to think of it as underlined.)
She had often wondered, hopefully, if she would ever be tempted beyond her strength. Absurd: this was the sort of thing that simply didn’t happen to ... to nice people. But there was a warm currency in her blood, radiant and quivering. She ought to go indoors and lie down ... lie on her bed and laugh ... but feeling her knees tremble she remembered that the underskirt was very sheer, and in that violent sunlight, walking across the lawn, he would see an ungraceful bifid silhouette ... you can’t really shock women, but you have to be so careful not to startle men ... without seeming to pay special attention he was evidently terribly observant.... What was it George had said once? that she was so beautiful his eye always enjoyed imagining the lines of her ... her.... No, body is a horrid word ... her figure ... under her thin dress. George was so carnal. And worse than that, apologetic for it. Mr. Martin isn’t carnal ... and if he were, he wouldn’t deprecate it.
“All the things I like are bad for me.”
She had said this almost unconsciously, for her mind had gone a long way ahead. She was thinking that if George drove recklessly through a thunderstorm, and the car skidded, and he ... died ... passed away ... on the way to the hospital at Dark Harbour (because the most appalling things do happen sometimes: why, once a flake of burning tobacco blew from George’s pipe into his eye, as he was turning a corner, and the car almost went into the ditch) ... what on earth would she do? Wire to New York for mourning, and would it be proper to keep Mr. Martin in the house after the funeral? The little churchyard on the dunes would be such a picturesque place to bury a husband: sandy soil, too (it seems so much cleaner, somehow) and harebells among the stones. What was that kind of lettering George was always talking about? Yes, Caslon: he would like that—
GEORGE GRANVILLE
IN THE 39TH YEAR OF HIS AGE