She clenched her hands, and then suddenly flung up her head and looked at him across the room furiously.
“Good night, Mr. Maradick,” she said, and was gone.
CHAPTER XX
MARADICK TELLS THE FAMILY, HAS BREAKFAST WITH HIS
WIFE, AND SAYS GOOD-BYE TO SOME FRIENDS
But he did not sleep.
Perhaps it was because his fatigue lay upon him like a heavy burden, so that to close his eyes was as though he allowed a great weight to fall upon him and crush him. His fatigue hung above him like a dark ominous cloud; it seemed indeed so ominous that he was afraid of it. At the moment when sleep seemed to come to him he would pull himself back with a jerk, he was afraid of his dreams.
Towards about four o’clock in the morning he fell into confused slumber. Shapes, people—Tony, Morelli, Mrs. Lester, his wife, Epsom, London—it was all vague, misty, and, in some incoherent way, terrifying. He wanted to wake, he tried to force himself to wake, but his eyes refused to open, they seemed to be glued together. The main impression that he got was of saying farewell to some one, or rather to a great many people. It was as though he were going away to a distant land, somewhere from which he felt that he would never return. But when he approached these figures to say good-bye they would disappear or melt into some one else.
About half-past six he awoke and lay tranquilly watching the light fill the windows and creep slowly, mysteriously, across the floor. His dreams had left him, but in spite of his weariness when he had gone to bed and the poor sleep that he had had he was not tired. He had a sensation of relief, of having completed something and, which was of more importance, of having got rid of it. A definite period in his life seemed to be ended, marked off. He had something of the feeling that Christian had when his pack left him. All the emotions, the struggles, the confusions of the last weeks were over, finished. He didn’t regret them; he welcomed them because of the things that they had taught him, but he did not want them back again. It was almost like coming through an illness.