Page 476 - women-in-love

CHAPTER XXIV

DEATH AND LOVE

Thomas Crich died slowly, terribly slowly. It seemed im-
possible to everybody that the thread of life could be drawn
out so thin, and yet not break. The sick man lay unutter-
ably weak and spent, kept alive by morphia and by drinks,
which he sipped slowly. He was only half conscious—a thin
strand of consciousness linking the darkness of death with
the light of day. Yet his will was unbroken, he was integral,
complete. Only he must have perfect stillness about him.
Any presence but that of the nurses was a strain and
an effort to him now. Every morning Gerald went into the
room, hoping to find his father passed away at last. Yet al-
ways he saw the same transparent face, the same dread dark
hair on the waxen forehead, and the awful, inchoate dark
eyes, which seemed to be decomposing into formless dark-
ness, having only a tiny grain of vision within them.
And always, as the dark, inchoate eyes turned to him,
there passed through Gerald’s bowels a burning stroke of
revolt, that seemed to resound through his whole being,
threatening to break his mind with its clangour, and mak-
ing him mad.
Every morning, the son stood there, erect and taut with
life, gleaming in his blondness. The gleaming blondness of

476 Women in Love