Page 482 - women-in-love

either—not till father.’ He seemed to meditate a while. Then
looking down at her, with strangely communicative blue
eyes, that filled her with dread, he continued: ‘It’s some-
thing you don’t reckon with, you know, till it is there. And
then you realise that it was there all the time—it was al-
ways there—you understand what I mean?—the possibility
of this incurable illness, this slow death.’
He moved his feet uneasily on the marble hearth, and
put his cigarette to his mouth, looking up at the ceiling.
‘I know,’ murmured Gudrun: ‘it is dreadful.’
He smoked without knowing. Then he took the ciga-
rette from his lips, bared his teeth, and putting the tip of his
tongue between his teeth spat off a grain of tobacco, turn-
ing slightly aside, like a man who is alone, or who is lost in
thought.
‘I don’t know what the effect actually IS, on one,’ he said,
and again he looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and
stricken with knowledge, looking into his. He saw her sub-
merged, and he turned aside his face. ‘But I absolutely am
not the same. There’s nothing left, if you understand what
I mean. You seem to be clutching at the void—and at the
same time you are void yourself. And so you don’t know
what to DO.’
‘No,’ she murmured. A heavy thrill ran down her nerves,
heavy, almost pleasure, almost pain. ‘What can be done?’
she added.
He turned, and flipped the ash from his cigarette on to
the great marble hearth-stones, that lay bare in the room,
without fender or bar.

482 Women in Love