“I should like to be annihilated.”
“Shut up von Bohlen; you wouldn’t. But look here Miriam child, do you mean to say you think that as long as there is something that keeps on and on, fighting its way on in spite of everything one has, well, a right to exist?”
“Well, that may be the survival of the fittest which doesn’t mean the ethically fittest as Huxley had to admit. We kill the ethically fittest at present. We killed Christ. They go to Heaven. All of us who survive have things to learn down here in hell. Perhaps this is hell. There seems something, ahead.”
“Ourselves. Rising on the ashes of our dead selves. Lord, it’s midnight——”
The chill of the outside night, solitude and her cold empty room....
“I’m going to bed.”
“So am I. We shall be in bed, Miriam, five minutes after you have gone.”
Jan went off for the hot water bottles.
“All right, I’m going——” Miriam bent for her shoes. The soles were dry, scorching; they scorched her feet as she forced on the shoes; one sole cracked across as she put her foot to the ground ... she braced the muscles of her face and said nothing. It must be forgotten before she left the room that they were nearly new and her only pair; two horrid ideas, nagging and keeping things away.