..His head was a flaming fire. The
pale light seemed for an instant to vanish, and the world was dark and
silent. Then, at the striking of the Cathedral clock, as though it were a
signal upon some stage, the light slowly crept back again, growing ever
stronger and stronger. The birds began to twitter; a cock crew. A bar of
golden light broken by the squares and patterns of the dark trees struck
the air.
The shock of his mother's announcement had been terrific. It was not only
the surprise of it, it was the sudden light that it flung upon his own
case. He had gone, during these last weeks, so far with Annie Hogg that it
was hard indeed to see how there could be any stepping back. They had
achieved a strange relationship together: one not of comradeship, nor of
lust, nor of desire, nor of affection, having a little of all these things
but not much of any of them, and finally resembling the case of two
strangers, shipwrecked, hanging on to a floating spar of wood that might
bring them into safety.
She was miserable; he was miserable; whether she cared for him he could
not tell, nor whether he cared for her.
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