Page 167 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

to amend my life—and to amend my life—
*****
He went up to his room after dinner in order to be alone
with his soul, and at every step his soul seemed to sigh; at
every step his soul mounted with his feet, sighing in the as-
cent, through a region of viscid gloom.
He halted on the landing before the door and then,
grasping the porcelain knob, opened the door quickly. He
waited in fear, his soul pining within him, praying silently
that death might not touch his brow as he passed over the
threshold, that the fiends that inhabit darkness might not
be given power over him. He waited still at the threshold as
at the entrance to some dark cave. Faces were there; eyes:
they waited and watched.
—We knew perfectly well of course that though it was
bound to come to the light he would find considerable dif-
ficulty in endeavouring to try to induce himself to try to
endeavour to ascertain the spiritual plenipotentiary and so
we knew of course perfectly well—
Murmuring faces waited and watched; murmurous voic-
es filled the dark shell of the cave. He feared intensely in
spirit and in flesh but, raising his head bravely, he strode
into the room firmly. A doorway, a room, the same room,
same window. He told himself calmly that those words had
absolutely no sense which had seemed to rise murmurously
from the dark. He told himself that it was simply his room
with the door open.
He closed the door and, walking swiftly to the bed, knelt
beside it and covered his face with his hands. His hands

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