"Angelica!" he said. "Please listen to this! Just tell me—these few lines—do you get a picture at all? I mean—just tell me exactly how it makes you feel—not what you think of it, you know, but how you feel. Sit down, please, and keep quiet. Now, you know, this is almost the end of the thing—the chap’s losing his faith—before he has the vision. It’s free verse, of course—an impression:
"Men crushed down, like worms under a heavy foot,
Half stamped into the mud, but the other half
Still squirming. Writhing corpses
With writhing wounds,
From which the blood squirts violently;
And over it all, in a cloud of mist, rose and gold,
Rides God.
God! God! God, the father of all these mutilated animals!
God Almighty, whose will it is to kill his sons in these hideous ways!
He sees everything. He hears everything. He hears their yells,
Their howls for pity and for death. He could stamp the worm
Quite out of existence;
Smear it into the ground so that it should be obliterated and
At peace;
But for His own good purposes, He lets it squirm!"
Angelica was quite stupefied; she had no clue, no dimmest idea what to say. She didn’t even know whether this weird stuff was meant to be funny. She thought it was and yet——
"You see," he went on, "it’s meant to be horrible. It is horrible, isn’t it?"
"Sure!" said Angelica. "It is."
"Now wait!" he said peremptorily, and swung round again on the stool, to continue his writing.
"Wait!" he muttered again. "Don’t go! I want you to hear this!"
She sat perfectly still for a long time. Then, suddenly, he groaned, looked round at her with a sort of glare, and tore up his paper with an oath.
"No!" he cried. "No! I can’t get it! Lord, it’s such torment!"
He buried his head in his hands.