The mask might have served a sculptor for the embodiment of
strength. He gave one the feeling that having conquered death he
was sleeping.
I did what he had requested of me. Indeed, I could not help it. I
thought of him constantly. That may have been the explanation of
it.
I was bicycling through Norfolk, and one afternoon, to escape a
coming thunderstorm, I knocked at the door of a lonely cottage on
the outskirts of a common. The woman, a kindly bustling person,
asked me in; and hoping I would excuse her, as she was busy ironing,
returned to her work in another room. I thought myself alone, and
was standing at the window watching the pouring rain. After a
while, without knowing why, I turned. And then I saw a child seated
on a high chair behind a table in a dark corner of the room. A book
of pictures was open before it, but it was looking at me. I could
hear the sound of the woman at her ironing in the other room.
Outside there was the steady thrashing of the rain. The child was
looking at me with large, round eyes filled with a terrible pathos.
I noticed that the little body was misshapen. It never moved; it
made no sound; but I had the feeling that out of those strangely
wistful eyes something was trying to speak to me. Something was
forming itself before me--not visible to my sight; but it was there,
in the room.
Pages:
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188