... He had seen her in her bed on the Sunday, her
fallen face, her sunken eyes, all framed in the detestable whiteness
of linen and waxen flowers, yet as pathetic and as appealing as ever,
and as necessary to his life. It was then that the supreme fact had
first penetrated to his consciousness, that he had lost her--the fact
which, driven home by the funeral scene this morning, the rustling
crowd come to see the young Squire, the elm box, the heap of
flowers--had now flung him down on this couch, crushed, broken, and
hopeless, like young ivy after a thunderstorm.
His moods alternated with the rapidity of flying clouds. At one
instant he was furious with pain, at the next broken and lax from the
same cause. At one moment he cursed God and desired to die, defiant
and raging; at the next he sank down into himself as weak as a
tortured child, while tears ran down his cheeks and little moans as of
an animal murmured in his throat. God was a hated adversary, a
merciless Judge ... a Blind Fate ... there was no God ... He was a
Fiend.... there was nothing anywhere in the whole universe but Pain
and Vanity....
Yet, through it all, like a throbbing pedal note, ran his need of this
girl.
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