Sick and aching she stood
there in the rain, scarcely realizing when the schoolmaster wrapped his
raincoat round her; she was wondering whether she would have been
happier if she had known he was lying dead in the mortuary, or ill in
the hospital instead of sitting, too drunk to move out in the rain on
the quay. And suddenly she knew quite well. He had said love was a
hunger, and she would understand some day that it was as tigerish a
hunger as drink hunger or any other. In that moment of utter disgust and
pain and despair she understood that that hunger had come to her though
she did not yet comprehend it. It had taken hold of her now--she writhed
at the indignity of the thought, but she knew quite well that she
actually wanted his presence with her whether he were rude and
overbearing, weak and appealing, superior and instructive or drunk and
filthy. She simply hungered to have him about her. Always ready to
query, to examine motives, she asked herself whether this were not,
after all, merely a species of vanity in her that wanted to hold and
save this helpless man who, it seemed, could not live for a day without
her. And she got no answer to the question--the black water rushed past,
chill and pitiless: the rain-swept sky was starless, the streaming decks
deserted.
At last she went below, and found it impossible to pass his cabin door.
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