“But you have your mind, John: draw yourself back into the sanity of its control.”
“Oh, if I could——”
“The other way is dissolution.”
“Dissolution of a lie, perhaps.”
“Dissolution of your personality, of your integrity.”
“Man’s unity perhaps is nothing, and the laws and logic of it: if he is but a fragment.”
“I can’t follow you, John. I have never seen broken this unity of matter. I come always nearer to it, the more I see.”
“What could your mind and your eyes behold beyond themselves? What fragment, feeling over its own domain, could judge itself other than the whole?”
“Sick,” he whispered to himself. And in silence, he watched me. The room was gray: the light of the lamp came horizontal to his eyes that watched me. We were still. I felt the silence that the rain had left.
Then something within his eyes that had searched mine, quailed. A subtle tremor went through all his body, as if in fear it yearned to be away. He was in anguish of an impalpable instinct, shuddering him off, and that shamed him. He held his ground. But his eyes were veiled with a wistful helplessness.