"One, two. One, two, three."
He must preserve his sanity, he said to himself, for the sake of the child. Otherwise it would be good to lose all remembrance, to forget, to dream, to lapse into the nothingness of the vacant eye, the down-drooping lid and the drivel.
"One, two. One, two, three," he counted, the wind listening.
In spite of the counting, with his eyes fixed on the desolation of the prairie, his thoughts on Celia, suddenly he felt himself seized by gusts of violent rage. The desire to dash out his brains against the unyielding wall of his relentless destiny tore him like the fingers of a giant hand.
"One, two. One, two, three," he counted, and between the words came the cry of the child.
If he could only render his mind a blank until it recovered its equilibrium, a ray of sunshine must leak in somewhere.
It must for the sake of the child.
But how was it possible for him to go back to the ghastliness of the dugout, the bereft house, where it was as if the most precious inmate had suddenly died—to the place that had held Celia but would hold her no more!
It was necessary to count very steadily here, to strangle an outcry of despair.
"One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three, four, five."