“—And so say all of us!”
... They were silent now, waiting for Sebastian.
Past the heat and the uproar and the odour of food, past the coarse laughter and good-humoured jokes, the grinning capped faces, and the disorderly table, Sebastian glimpsed it clearly, his Vision ... never before as clearly: a lean stripped figure, striving, battling, forcing itself against the rushing winds of earth; hands clenched, jaw pushed forward ... yes, surely it was Stuart’s face he saw!
—These others should share the vision with him. He was about to sacrifice to it—these others should understand why. He knew now to what point he had been goaded through all the sweetness of the past weeks, through all the gabble and gobble of the past hour. He knew. He wasn’t going to flinch. Boring a hole in the wind with the thrust of one’s own body.... If Stuart could do it, he could.
The first notes of his voice startled his hearers; it seemed pitched somehow in the wrong key; neither jocular nor embarrassed:
“I can’t fix a day for the wedding, as Mr. Johnson has asked me to. I—there won’t be a wedding. My engagement with Letty is broken off.”
—Suddenly he wanted to laugh. Granpa’s face, just opposite, looked so funny in its dropped amazement, the gilt crown at a crooked angle on the shining poll.... Everyone’s face was funny—staring—staring—round eyes and open mouths wherever he looked—like waxworks. Letty ... well, Letty was beside him. He need not see her unless he turned his head....
“You all think me quite mad,” Sebastian went on, after a pause. “Well, and I think you mad, all of you. I’ve been thinking so all through dinner. Because you can’t see anything beyond the dining-room table, and what’s on it. If I married Letty, I should have to sit for the rest of my life at a dining-room table, looking at the food. It would be warm and comfortable and satisfying, and in time I should grow as mad as you. I very nearly did. But I’m sane now—and I’m bitten with the horror of getting all one wants, and going on getting it, and not wanting any more. Giving up Letty now, I shall want her my whole life long ... for I love her—do you understand that? Of course, you think one shouldn’t speak of love except to be funny about it—but you’ve got to realize that I love her, every bit of her; that I love her, and I’m giving her up—and oh, God! how it hurts.... How good that it should hurt....”
He bowed his face on to his hands, unable for an instant to grapple with the swift salt cruelty of self-torment. From beside him, came the sound of soft weeping. There was to be no splendid help from Letty, in his renunciation; quite simply, she laid her head down on her arms and sobbed, because she didn’t know what was the matter with Sebastian,—oh, what was the matter with him, that he should be so unkind?
Luke was gazing, wide-eyed, mouth gaping; he had not understood a single word of Sebastian’s discourse, but, nevertheless, his soul was one flame of admiration. A half-fearful hope of happiness was stiffening the limp spirit of Balaam Atkins. But Mr. Johnson, on whose brow a ponderous wrath had gathered, burst out, almost apoplectic with rage: