It is no longer to
be found in monasteries but in the world, in the..."
The deep sound seemed to rise from under the floor, and one felt steeped
in it to the lips. Miss Haldin's interruption resembled the effort of
a drowning person to keep above water. She struck in with an accent of
impatience--
"But, Peter Ivanovitch, I don't mean to retire into a monastery. Who
would look for salvation there?"
"I spoke figuratively," he boomed.
"Well, then, I am speaking figuratively too. But sorrow is sorrow and
pain is pain in the old way. They make their demands upon people. One
has got to face them the best way one can. I know that the blow which
has fallen upon us so unexpectedly is only an episode in the fate of a
people. You may rest assured that I don't forget that. But just now
I have to think of my mother. How can you expect me to leave her to
herself...?"
"That is putting it in a very crude way," he protested in his great
effortless voice.
Miss Haldin did not wait for the vibration to die out.
"And run about visiting amongst a lot of strange people. The idea is
distasteful for me; and I do not know what else you may mean?"
He towered before her, enormous, deferential, cropped as close as a
convict and this big pinkish poll evoked for me the vision of a wild
head with matted locks peering through parted bushes, glimpses of naked,
tawny limbs slinking behind the masses of sodden foliage under a cloud
of flies and mosquitoes.
Pages:
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171