She asked herself doubtingly: “You have been unhappier having, than now when you are empty. Perhaps I am dead!”
Each thought and pain, pushing forth from her, could not leave the mist of her strange slumber. So that she could not be unhappy. For unhappiness is the departure of ourselves from ourselves, the adventure beyond us of our hearts and eyes. Fanny was caught in her pregnant slumber. Her consciousness was like a maze of creatures crawling about a Sphere who cannot leave its surface: who cannot conceive of aught within or without its surface: creatures of two dimensions spanning a Globe about and about ... and yet unable to know it.
* * *
It had been hot, this day: now late, sultry clouds pressed like steel on the pulsant City. Dust rose in a great wind. The Office seemed to plunge through a sea of dust and steel cloud.
The others were gone: in the suddenly dark room, Fanny worked alone with Mr. Johns. He examined her books, leaning over her, just above her shoulder, breathing palpably there in the dark room.
A gust of wind from the gray window scattered a pile of papers, Johns’ hand came flat on the table.
“It’s going to rain,” he said.
“Yes.”
He strode to the window and shut it.
“That wont be too hot? All these papers will blow, I’m afraid.”