“I don’t know. I hate cornering people. It would not have made him different and I am no better than he is.”
“That is a most extraordinary point of view.”
“I was sorry afterwards that I had written like that.”
“Why?”
“Because he threw himself into Dublin Harbour a year later. He must have been in fearful difficulties.”
“No excuse for criminal neglect.”
“The most wonderful thing in the accident itself,” pursued Miriam firmly, grasping her midnight freedom and gazing into the pattern her determination that for another few minutes no one should come up to interrupt, “was being so near to death.” She glanced up to gauge the effect of her improvisation. The moment she was now intent upon had not been ‘wonderful.’ She would not be able to substantiate it; she had never thought it through. It lay ahead now for exploration if he wished, ready to reveal its quality to her for the first time ...... he was sitting hunched against the wall with his hands driven into his pockets, waiting without resistance, with an intentness equal to her own ... she returned gratefully to her carpet. “It was a skid” she said feeling the oily slither of her front tyre. “I fell with my elbow and head between the horses’ heels and the wheel of a dray. The back-thrown hoof of the near horse caught the inner side of my arm, and for a long long time I saw the grey steel rim of the huge wheel approaching my head. It was strained back with all my force, my elbow pressing the ground, but I thought it could not miss me. There was a moment of absolute calm; indifference almost. It came after a feeling of hatred and yet pity for the wheel. It was so awful, wet glittering grey, and relentless; and stupid, it could not help going on.”
“This was indeed a most remarkable psychological experience. It happens rarely to be so near death with full consciousness. But this absence of fear must be in you a personal idiosyncracy.”
“But I was afraid. The thing is that you don’t go on feeling afraid. Do you see?”
“I hear what you say. But while there is the chance of life the instinct of self-preservation is so strong” ...