XX
He passed through the dining room to the inner doorway, where he brushed by Mrs. Caley. Her face was as harsh and twisted as an old root. He proceeded directly to the bed.
“Lettice,” he said; “Lettice.”
Then he saw the appalling futility of addressing that familiar name to the strange head on the pillow.
Lettice had gone: she had been destroyed as utterly as though a sinister and ruthless magic had blasted every infinitesimal quality that had been hers. A countenance the color of glazed white paper seemed to hold pools of ink in the hollows of its eyes. The drawn mouth was the color of stale milk. Nothing remained to summon either pity or sorrow. The only possible emotion in the face of that revolting human disaster was an incredulous and shocked surprise. It struck like a terrible jest, a terrible, icy reminder, into the forgetful warmth of living; it mocked at the supposed majesty of suffering, tore aside the assumed dignity, the domination, of men; it tampered ferociously with the beauty, the pride, the innocent and gracious pretensions, of youth, of women.
Gordon Makimmon was conscious of an overwhelming desire to flee from the white grimace on the bed that had been Lettice’s and his. He drew back, in a momentary, abject, shameful cowardice; then he forced himself to return.... The fleering lips quivered, there was a slight stir under the counterpane. A little sound gathered, shaped into words barely audible in the stillness of the room broken only by Gordon’s breathing:
“It’s ... too much. Not any more ... hurting. Oh! I can’t—”
He found a chair, and sat down by her side. The palms of his hands were wet, and he wiped them upon his knees. His fear of the supine figure grew, destroying the arrogance of his manhood, his sentient reason. He was afraid of what it intimated, threatened, for himself, and of its unsupportable mockery. He felt as an animal might feel cornered by a hugely grim and playful cruelty.
The westering sun fell through a window on the disordered huddle of Lettice’s hastily discarded clothes streaming from a chair to the floor—her stockings, her chemise threaded with a narrow blue ribband. His thoughts turned to the little white garments she had fashioned in vain.