—I am falling away. Grappling, crying, she saw at last how real was this falling away from the whole warm world of her sorrows and joys and wants.—Edith, Harry; myself, O Edith my heart! It is true. Can I fall upward? ...
The fast train seemed to be running over her life. It ran over an earth full of flying fragments. Over houses, fence snapping, cows dipped sudden into trees, pool flaring skyward, cloud-full, caught in the porch of a house, road ribboning a tobacco-field, shaken straight, road stiff like a rod flashing away beneath her.—This is Virginia, this is I. The fast train running over her life smoothed it clear....
She could have remained and fought him for her child, she could not. She could have remained and won him ... repulsive ... she could not. She moved upon a track that was there she sensed before her moving upon it. But Edith! What sort of a life is this, moving away from Edith? The pain of her deprival was a thousand pains, gray: a thousand gray birds circling her in mist.—I am suffering, suffering. Can I stand this? The mists cleared. She saw her Pain clear ... one Pain ... one moment. Pain. She saw that it was not a thousand pains, weeping in gray wings mistily about her. She saw that it was Life.
Life solid and salient.
—What is this terror? What have I to do with this terror?
You are within it!
... Like this Virginia, an unbroken sweep, broken alone by the unwonted stress of the dimension of moving. One can face solid. One has two eyes and a mind for facing solid.... She loved her daughter.—I love you, love you! More things she loved. Not Harry perhaps, O yes ... the warm dreams she had born in Harry. The house around Edith. Clean beds, linen her own, the kitchen where she came each day and the apron she tied about her hips and the hips too she loved which arms must circle she was sure of. Edith’s. Home, daughter, man ... why were they all destroyed?
—But they have never been.
What have they been?... pool of my blood of dream.
Stagnant and dead: pool of my clotted blood.
My dream’s blood flows!
It was true. Bleeding to death? Bleeding to birth? She did not know. But flowing.
“God, let me think!” The words came aloud.—God, let me think! now silent....—Edith? Yes, Edith was flowing alive. But Edith was not herself, not her blood flowing. Edith’s blood flowing. Let it flow for Edith.