“I know all that. I was only thinking. Look here. Suppose you had something in your mind; something you were going to do.”
“Yes, deary; something I was going to do?”
“But had not quite determined to do.”
“Yes, deary.”
“Might or might not do, you understand.”
“Yes.” With the point of a needle she stirs the contents of the bowl.
“Should you do it in your fancy, when you were lying here doing this?”
She nods her head. “Over and over again.”
“Just like me! I did it over and over again. I have done it hundreds of thousands of times in this room.”
“It’s to be hoped it was pleasant to do, deary.”
“It was pleasant to do!”
He says this with a savage air, and a spring or start at her. Quite unmoved, she retouches and replenishes the contents of the bowl with her little spatula. Seeing her intent upon the occupation, he sinks into his former attitude.
“It was a journey, a difficult and dangerous journey. That was the subject in my mind. A hazardous and perilous journey, over abysses where a slip would be destruction. Look down, look down! You see what lies at the bottom there?”
He has darted forward to say it, and to point at the ground, as though at some imaginary object far beneath. The woman looks at him, as his