tter what storm raged in her body. Her soul
lay still and permanent, full of pain, but itself for ever.
Under all her illness, persisted a deep, inalterable
knowledge.

She knew, and she cared no more. Throughout her illness,
distorted into vague forms, persisted the question of herself
and Skrebensky, like a gnawing ache that was still superficial,
and did not touch her isolated, impregnable core of reality. But
the corrosion of him burned in her till it burned itself
out.

Must she belong to him, must she adhere to him? Something
compelled her, and yet it was not real. Always the ache, the
ache of unreality, of her belonging to Skrebensky. What bound
her to him when she was not bound to him? Why did the falsity
persist? Why did the falsity gnaw, gnaw, gnaw at her, why could
she not wake up to clarity, to reality. If she could but wake
up, if she could but wake up, the falsity of the dream, of her
connection with Skrebensky, would be gone. But the sleep, the
delirium pinned her down. Even when she was calm and sober she
was in its spell.

Yet she was never in its spell. What extraneous thing bound
her to him? There was some bond put upon her. Why could she not
break it through? What was it? What was it?

In her delirium she beat and beat at the question. And at
last her weariness gave her the answer--it was the child.
The child bound her to him. The child was like a bond round her
brain, tightened on her brain. It bound her to Skrebensky.

But why, why did it bind her to Skrebensky? Could she not
have a child of herself? Was not the child her own affair? all
her own affair? What had it to do with him? Why must she be
bound, aching and cramped with the bondage, to Skrebensky and
Skrebensky's world? Anton's world: it became in her feverish
brain a compression which enclosed her. If she could not get out
of the compression she would go mad. The compression was Anton
and Anton's world, not the Anton she possessed, but the Anton
she did not possess, that which was owned by some other
influence, by the world.

She fought and fought and fought all through her illness to
be free of him and his world, to put it aside, to put it aside,
into its place. Yet ever anew it gained ascendency over her, it
laid new hold on her. Oh, the unutterable weariness of her
flesh, which she could not cast off, nor yet extricate. If she
could but extricate herself, if she could but disengage herself
from feeling, from her body, from al