It was not mere
pressure; it had a character of its own for which the girl afterwards
had no words. She could only say that, so far from being negation, or
emptiness, or non-being, it had an air, hot as flame, black as pitch,
and hard as iron.
That then was the situation for a time which she could only afterwards
reckon by guesswork; there was no development or movement--no
measurable incidents; there was but the state that remained poised;
below all those comparatively superficial faculties with which men in
general carry on their affairs--that state in which two Personalities
faced one another, welded together in a grip that lay on the very
brink of fusion....
_Chapter XVIII_
I
The cocks were crowing from the yards behind the village when Maggie
opened her eyes, clear shrill music, answered from the hill as by
their echoes, and the yews outside were alive with the dawn-chirping
of the sparrows.
She lay there quite quietly, watching under her tired eyelids, through
the still unshuttered windows, the splendid glow, seen behind the
twisted stems in front and the slender fairy forest of birches on the
further side of the garden. Immediately outside the window lay the
path, deep in yew-needles, the ground-ivy beyond, and the wet lawn
glistening in the strange mystical light of morning.
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