The worry-sickness of caring for one who no longer
returned that love, had slowly eaten away at the warmth and loyalty he
felt for her, leaving him hard and cold and indifferent. Or so it
seemed to him then. He rolled over onto his side, muttering, and
perhaps an hour later fell at last into a restless, brooding sleep.
But Kataya could no more sleep than bring back the dead, stung to the
very heart by intolerable memories of the love she had lost forever.
And this pain which lay at the heart of all others, aggravated that very
day by the departure of Ishmael and the poor, doomed Children, tormented
her every thought, until even the simplest feeling could not be
accomplished without a pain that was almost physical.
And while she considered herself superior to Sylviana, and even in a way
to Kalus himself, the lashings of emptiness at the hollow discipline of
denial were no less acute for it. She remembered the words of Sinclair
Lewis, from the book she was then translating.
'Not individuals but institutions are the enemies, And THEY MOST
AFFLICT THE DISCIPLES WHO MOST GENEROUSLY SERVE THEM.' A more apt
description of her own religious and cultural servitude she could not
imagine.
But these self-recriminations were meaningless, and she knew it. What
lay at the root of her agitation was her forlorn desire for Kalus.
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