II-XXI

After a while he rose, impelled once more
within. A lamp had been lit in the bedroom,
and, in its radiance, the countenance
on the pillow glistened like the skin of a lemon. As
before, Mrs. Caley left the room as he entered; and
he thought that, as she passed him, she snarled like
an animal.

He sat bowed by the bed. A moth perished in
the flame of the lamp, and the light flickered through
the room -- it seemed that Lettice grimaced, but it
was only the other. Her face had grown sharper:
it was such a travesty of her that, somehow, he
ceased to associate it with Lettice at all. Instead
he began to think of it as something exclusively of
his own making -- it was what he had done with
things, with life.

The sheet lay over the motionless body like a thin
covering of snow on the turnings of the earth; it
defined her breasts and a hip as crisply as though
they were cut in marble effigy on a tomb of youthful
dissolution. He followed the impress of an arm to
the hand; and, leaning forward, touched it. A

[[275]]

p274 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p275w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p276

v?