A Diversity of Creatures

by Rudyard Kipling

'They try to. Their faces are all mildewy--eaten away,' and she hid her face for an instant with her left hand. 'It's the Faces--the Faces!'

'Yes. Like my two hoots. I know.'

'Ah! But the place itself--the bareness--and the glitter and the salt smells, and the wind blowing the sand! The Men run after me and I run.... I know what's coming too. One of them touches me.'

'Yes! What comes then? We've both shirked that.'

'One awful shock--not palpitation, but shock, shock, shock!'

'As though your soul were being stopped--as you'd stop a finger-bowl humming?' he said.

'Just that,' she answered. 'One's very soul--the soul that one lives by--stopped. So!'

She drove her thumb deep into the arm-rest. 'And now,' she whined to him, 'now that we've stirred each other up this way, mightn't we have just one?'

'No,' said Conroy, shaking. 'Let's hold on. We're past'--he peered out of the black windows--'Woking. There's the Necropolis. How long till dawn?'

'Oh, cruel long yet. If one dozes for a minute, it catches one.'