He analyzed the family and told himself that it was a monster which fed on pain. It had grown stronger while Winnie had been weak and sick. It was yet stronger now that she was dead.
When night came he thought of Winnie, who had always been afraid to be alone, left in the dark and the silence and the wet earth. About twelve it began to rain. She was more still out there because of the rain.
He saw the plump, stiff body happy in its box. The rain softened its plumpness. The dead woman was lost in the thick night, in the rain—always.
The night said nothing, but in one place, far off, where the grave was, the night became bright and horrible. He understood the night where it came from the grave in the darkness.
The dead woman stirred. The cold was bright in the whiteness of her face. Here was where the dark ended in itself.
The rain fell upon her. He could not tear her from the rain, or from his horror of her. He was locked in his horror of her as in a perpetual embrace.
She was dead. She lived in him endlessly. Never could he be delivered except into greater intimacy. Forever, he belonged to her; to her white face with shut eyes, to its passive torture, to its movelessness against rain. He felt already the day, cold like this, still like this, when she would have him utterly. Almost, it seemed that he remembered something.
One evening after the children had eaten, Alice said, "I'll undress the kiddikins. Is it time for the baby's bottle, Mamma?"
Mrs. Farley wanted to give the baby his bottle, but there was meat burning in the oven, so she resigned the office to Alice. "If he's still asleep, don't wake him up."