“George!”
“Well, that’s what Mary called it. And when I see that the boy has found adventure, discipline and joy in faith, am I to take it away and offer him soup?”
“George, I’m really shocked to hear you talk like that. Please turn down the landing light—I can’t reach it.”
“Religion is romance,” said George’s voice in the thick darkness of the house—“and I’ve been twelve years trying to turn it into soup....”
§ 20
Rose made up her mind that her husband must be ill, therefore she forebore further scolding or argument, and hurried him into bed with a cup of malted milk.
“You’ve done too much,” she said severely—“you said you didn’t feel well enough to come with me to the Parishes, and then you went tramping off to Vinehall. What can you expect when you’re so silly? Now drink this and go to sleep.”
George went to sleep. But in the middle of the night he awoke. All the separate things of life, all the differences of time and space, seemed to have run together in one sharp moment. He was not in the bed, he was not in the room ... the room seemed to be in him, for he saw every detail of its trim mediocrity ... and there lay George Alard on the bed beside a sleeping Rose ... but he was George Alard right enough, for George Alard’s pain was his, that queer constricting pain which was part of the functions of his body, of every breath he drew and every beat of his heart ... he was lying in bed ... gasping, suffering, dying ... this was what it meant to die.... Rose! Rose!
Rose bent over her husband; her big plaits swung in his face.