—What do I understand? now she asked herself as the room waited, spinning in expectancy, released in laughter and jest and stretching of arms from Time.
—There is something beautiful ... in the understanding? in what? O life how you hurt! O life, how when one holds you warm and athrob in one’s heart, you are good, hurting!
The lemonade came: giggles and smacking lips softened the blare of the lights. “One can live,” Fanny murmured sipping her sweet drink, ... “without questions.” The room went its way up Time’s black tunnel. The girls’ congestion broke. They were one and one and one. They were many girls, now, some sweet, some bitter, some bright, some dull, some brave, some ugly and broken. They were many girls at work: they opened envelopes, marked blanks and sheets, sorted and marked ... they droned in many minds about little shut circles of thought, each shut from the other circles: circles spun about their many heads, colliding, rebounding, spinning away alone....
—One can live without asking questions. Not you. One can live spinning and droning. Not you. One can weave a steel sheet between one’s heart and one’s mind. Not you. Lord, I shall think. I promise, Lord.... I shall remember that I have suffered and died, that I am here, to think.... Lord, just a little longer.
* * *
Fanny walked home alone, avoiding Clara. In the dim afternoon the City was solid. Houses were made of stone and brick and were held up in their vast weights by pavements.
Pavements solid strong, hold me up also.
You hold these crowds, you hold these walls.
Solid City, do not let me fall.
Fanny walked tense through the slack afternoon, helping to hold herself. Her trip from the South was there. She runs swift, relaxed, through the world. She falls through the world in a train, falls upward. She falls upward upon God. Hold me, City.
In her room, the Church. Her fists clenched.
“I am going to move,” she muttered, her breath was angry. She hated ... she hated. “Damn that Church! it blots out most of the sun.”