He could no longer distinguish her clearly,
she was blurring in a dusk deeping so imperceptibly that it seemed a
gradual failing of his vision. The geographer's globe appeared to sway
slightly, like a balloon tied to a string; the gay muslin of the piled
text books had lost their designs. Suddenly the room without motion, the
approaching night, the desirable presence of the woman growing more
immaterial, more shadow-like to elude his reaching hands, presented a
symbol, an epitome, of himself. Day fading swiftly into dark; dissolving
the realities of table and flesh and floor; leaving only the hunger,
the insuperable inner necessity and sense of loss.
"Good-bye," he breathed. Jasper Penny saw that she raised her head, he
caught the glimmering pallor of her face. But she said nothing, and sank
back into the crumpled position on the table. He went out, closing the
door of the office, shutting her into the loneliness of her resolve, her
insistence.
In the familiar rooms at Sanderson's Hotel he revolved again and again
all that she had said. For a little he even endeavoured to inspect
calmly the possibility of a marriage with Essie Scofield. Steeped in
Susan's spirit he thought of it as a reparation, to Eunice, perhaps to
Essie, but more certainly to an essence within himself.
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