till father.' He seemed to meditate a while. Then looking down at her,
with strangely communicative blue eyes, that filled her with dread, he
continued: 'It's something you don't reckon with, you know, till it is
there. And then you realise that it was there all the time--it was
always there--you understand what I mean?--the possibility of this
incurable illness, this slow death.'

He moved his feet uneasily on the marble hearth, and put his cigarette
to his mouth, looking up at the ceiling.

'I know,' murmured Gudrun: 'it is dreadful.'

He smoked without knowing. Then he took the cigarette from his lips,
bared his teeth, and putting the tip of his tongue between his teeth
spat off a grain of tobacco, turning slightly aside, like a man who is
alone, or who is lost in thought.

'I don't know what the effect actually IS, on one,' he said, and again
he looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and stricken with knowledge,
looking into his. He saw her submerged, and he turned aside his face.
'But I absolutely am not the same. There's nothing left, if you
understand what I mean. You seem to be clutching at the void--and at
the same time you are void yourself. And so you don't know what to DO.'

'No,' she murmured. A heavy thrill ran down her nerves, heavy, almost
pleasure, almost pain. 'What can be done?' she added.

He turned, and flipped the ash from his cigarette on to the great
marble hearth-stones, that lay bare in the room, without fender or bar.

'I don't know, I'm sure,' he replied. 'But I do think you've got to
find some way of resolving the situation--not because you want to, but
because you've GOT to, otherwise you're done. The whole of everything,
and yourself included, is just on the point of caving in, and you are
just holding it up with your hands. Well, it's a situation that
obviously can't continue. You can't stand holding the roof up with your
hands, for ever. You know that sooner or later you'll HAVE to let go.
Do you understand what I mean? And so something's got to be done, or
there's a universal collapse--as far as you yourself are concerned.'

He shifted slightly on the hearth, crunching a cinder under his heel.
He looked down at it. Gudrun was aware of the beautiful old marble
panels of the fireplace, swelling softly carved, round him and above
him. She felt as if she were caught at last by fate, imprisoned in some
horrible and fatal trap.

'But what CAN be done?' she murmured humbly. 'You must