Activity

I awoke suddenly. The moon was shining into my bedroom, where I had omitted to pull down the blind. I could hear the splash of the sea and a very faint rattle of the stones which the waves were gently clawing as they withdrew from the cauldron. It must be low tide. I could hear also, or sense, a va…

[...] Thus we existed together in a sort of crazy mysterious precarious mutual toleration. At intervals she repeated that she wanted to go home, but she accepted my firm refusals passively, and this was encouraging. Of course with every hour that passed her fear of returning must increase, and this…

‘Oh—good. Hartley, just relax, let it go, let it drop.’

‘Let what drop?’

‘You know—this burden, this useless fruitless loyalty, this pointless sacrifice. You’re making his life a misery too, let it go, let him go. You’re like a half-dead person.’

I said to Titus, ‘I want him to see the letter. And you are both to stay here. Are we that man’s slaves? I want to let your mother out of that cage.’

Hartley gave a cry of woe.

[...] I wanted, in the time that was left to us, to console her as a god consoles. But I also wanted increasingly, and with a violence which almost burnt the tenderness away, to own her, to possess her body and soul.