Soon he was
impotent to struggle against them. As he sat huddled and motionless,
he revived each memory and wilfully renewed its delight. The brick
walls, the timber beams, the flooring boards, and plastered partitions
could not divide her from him; though hidden at a distance, she shed
emanations, fiery atoms, darting sparks, that infallibly reached him:
when he closed his eyes in order not to see the empty space before
him, she herself was here. He could feel again the light weight of her
body upon his knees, her hair brushed against his chin, her face gave
itself to his lips.
Then more remote memories came to join the recent memories, deepening
the spell that subjugated him. He thought of her crying when he teased
her about love and marriage, and when her poor little innocent heart
was bursting because of his pretense of not understanding that she
craved for no love but his. And he thought of how she had looked in
the middle of the night when he covered her with his jacket, and she
stood before him trembling and blushing, with her hair all tumbling
loose. That had been one of the mental pictures which he could not
even make dim, much less obliterate.
He groaned, got up from the bench, and walked very slowly round the
kitchen and behind the house.
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