Page 515 - women-in-love

felt an overwhelming tenderness for him, and a dark, un-
der-stirring of jealous hatred, that he should lie so perfect
and immune, in an other-world, whilst she was tormented
with violent wakefulness, cast out in the outer darkness.
She lay in intense and vivid consciousness, an exhausting
superconsciousness. The church clock struck the hours, it
seemed to her, in quick succession. She heard them distinct-
ly in the tension of her vivid consciousness. And he slept as
if time were one moment, unchanging and unmoving.
She was exhausted, wearied. Yet she must continue in
this state of violent active superconsciousness. She was con-
scious of everything—her childhood, her girlhood, all the
forgotten incidents, all the unrealised influences and all the
happenings she had not understood, pertaining to herself,
to her family, to her friends, her lovers, her acquaintances,
everybody. It was as if she drew a glittering rope of knowl-
edge out of the sea of darkness, drew and drew and drew it
out of the fathomless depths of the past, and still it did not
come to an end, there was no end to it, she must haul and
haul at the rope of glittering consciousness, pull it out phos-
phorescent from the endless depths of the unconsciousness,
till she was weary, aching, exhausted, and fit to break, and
yet she had not done.
Ah, if only she might wake him! She turned uneasi-
ly. When could she rouse him and send him away? When
could she disturb him? And she relapsed into her activity of
automatic consciousness, that would never end.
But the time was drawing near when she could wake
him. It was like a release. The clock had struck four, out-

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