When the sun sank, out from the copper-blue night, from the horizon, the dark trees rolled angrily. The remote stars flashed blue sparks like a paler rage. But infinitely deep, from the night of the earth, the gray-white tombstones floated up.
Laurence could not believe in death. He did not know it. But he was sick with death, because it oppressed his unbelief. He wanted to take it into himself and understand it.
Yet the same breath which desired knowledge was filled with protest. He wanted to get away from the thing which crushed him with its unknown being—crushed him in the blankness of the still sunshine and the cold wind above the damp, new grave.
When he reached home after the funeral, the children had come back. May clung about her father. Because of her fear of him, she seemed to know him better than others knew him. For her own sake he wanted her to hate him, to keep herself separate from his pity of her.
He felt his pity for others in him like a rottenness. He would have torn the sickness out of his flesh, but it was through him, decaying him. His blood was dry.
If he saw anything unworthy, he immediately discovered its weakness, and sheltered it with his contempt. He could not be clean and strong and harsh for himself. That was why he could fight for nothing that he wished; because his enemies were inside him, and in order to destroy them he had to tear and torture himself. If the sickness in him had been his own, he could have cured it; but it was the sickness of his children, of Alice, of his father and mother.
As a young man he had never been able to carry a decision into effect, since he could never clearly distinguish his own pains from the pains of those he opposed. As a boy, his pride made him suffer with a sense of misunderstood greatness. Winnie had drunk that suffering out of him. He had drained himself dry that her agony might be rich.
Winnie had drunk his want. He was empty. His heart was old.
He flung his children away. He was free. But free was the name of a thing he had lost. While Winnie lived there was a certain vividness in his fatigue. His resentment of her had held him together.