were well, just
the same as when he was going about. So that Winifred, with a child's
subtle instinct for avoiding the painful things, behaved as if nothing
serious was the matter. Instinctively, she withheld her attention, and
was happy. Yet in her remoter soul, she knew as well as the adults
knew: perhaps better.

Her father was quite well in his make-belief with her. But when she
went away, he relapsed under the misery of his dissolution. But still
there were these bright moments, though as his strength waned, his
faculty for attention grew weaker, and the nurse had to send Winifred
away, to save him from exhaustion.

He never admitted that he was going to die. He knew it was so, he knew
it was the end. Yet even to himself he did not admit it. He hated the
fact, mortally. His will was rigid. He could not bear being overcome by
death. For him, there was no death. And yet, at times, he felt a great
need to cry out and to wail and complain. He would have liked to cry
aloud to Gerald, so that his son should be horrified out of his
composure. Gerald was instinctively aware of this, and he recoiled, to
avoid any such thing. This uncleanness of death repelled him too much.
One should die quickly, like the Romans, one should be master of one's
fate in dying as in living. He was convulsed in the clasp of this death
of his father's, as in the coils of the great serpent of Laocoon. The
great serpent had got the father, and the son was dragged into the
embrace of horrifying death along with him. He resisted always. And in
some strange way, he was a tower of strength to his father.

The last time the dying man asked to see Gudrun he was grey with near
death. Yet he must see someone, he must, in the intervals of
consciousness, catch into connection with the living world, lest he
should have to accept his own situation. Fortunately he was most of his
time dazed and half gone. And he spent many hours dimly thinking of the
past, as it were, dimly re-living his old experiences. But there were
times even to the end when he was capable of realising what was
happening to him in the present, the death that was on him. And these
were the times when he called in outside help, no matter whose. For to
realise this death that he was dying was a death beyond death, never to
be borne. It was an admission never to be made.

Gudrun was shocked by his appearance, and by the darkened, almost
disintegrated eyes, that still were unconquered and f