The forest glade grew dim, vanished. He was lying on the grass in a
London park, and Mavis' confession rang through the buzzing of his
ears, through the chaos of his mind. It seemed that the whole of his
small imagined world had gone to pieces, and the immensity of the real
world had been left to him in exchange--crushing him with an idea of
its unexplored vastness, of its many countries, its myriad races. And
yet, big as it all was, it could not provide breathing space for that
man and himself.
Soon this became an oppressive certainty. Life under the new
conditions had been rendered unendurable. And then there grew up the
one solid determination, that he must stand face to face with his
enemy and call him to account. It must _at last_ be man to man. He
must tell the man what he thought of him, call him filthy names, strip
him of every shred of dignity--and strike him. A few blows of scorn
might suffice--a backhander across the snout, a few swishes with a
stick, a kick behind when he turned. He was too rottenly weak a thing
to fight with.
His mind refused to go further than this. However deeply and darkly it
was working below the surface of consciousness, it gave him no
further directions than this.
Pages:
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430