in the end a little figure in a
nightshirt beat the dark with its fists.

For a time she found solace in thinking that perhaps she was expiating
her involuntary sin in hating her child, and indeed it seemed to her
that when she evoked that little figure she felt something in her heart
which, if she and the frozen substance of her were triturated a little
more by torture, might grow into that proper loving pain which she
coveted more than any pleasure. But that process, if it ever had begun,
was stopped when Richard was fifteen.

It happened, two days after he had come home for the summer holidays,
that in the early part of the night she had again been stoned and that
she had started up, crying out, "Harry! Harry!" She heard the latch of
the door lift, and someone stood on her threshold breathing angrily.
Half asleep, she mumbled, "Harry, it can't be you?..." A voice answered
haltingly, "No," and a match scratched, and Richard crossed the room and
lit the candle by her bedside. She could not see him, for the light was
too strong after the darkness, and she could not quite climb out of her
dream, but she rocked her head from side to side and muttered, "Go to
bed, I'm all right, all right." But he sat down on her bed and took her
hand in his, and said sullenly, "You've been calling out for my father.
Why are you doing that?" She whimpered, "Nothing. I was only dreaming."
But he went on, terrifying her through her veil of sleep. "I know all
about it, mother. The other boys told me about it. And Goodtart said
something once." His hand tightened on hers. "You used to meet him up at
that temple." For a minute he paused, and seemed to be shuddering, and
then persisted, "What is it? Why do you cry almost every night? I've
heard you ever so often. You've got to tell me what's the matter."

She stiffened under the fierce loving rage in his tone and stayed rigid
for a moment. Through her drowsiness there was floating some idea that
the salvation of her soul depended on keeping stiff and silent, but
because she was still netted in the dream, and the beating of the tin
cans distracted her, she could not follow it and grasp it, and soon she
desired to tell him as much as she had always before feared it. In her
long reticence she felt like a suspended wave forbidden to break on the
shore by a magician's spell, and she lifted her hands imploringly to him
so that he bent down and kissed her. It was as if the heat of his lips
dissolved