The moon becomes the Regent of the Skies. People clap spurs
to their horses, and so on. I'm going to treat people as though they
were exactly the same as we are. The advantage is that, detached from
modern conditions, one can make them more intense and more abstract then
people who live as we do."
Rachel had listened to all this with attention, but with a certain
amount of bewilderment. They both sat thinking their own thoughts.
"I'm not like Hirst," said Hewet, after a pause; he spoke meditatively;
"I don't see circles of chalk between people's feet. I sometimes wish I
did. It seems to me so tremendously complicated and confused. One can't
come to any decision at all; one's less and less capable of making
judgments. D'you find that? And then one never knows what any one feels.
We're all in the dark. We try to find out, but can you imagine anything
more ludicrous than one person's opinion of another person? One goes
along thinking one knows; but one really doesn't know."
As he said this he was leaning on his elbow arranging and rearranging
in the grass the stones which had represented Rachel and her aunts
at luncheon. He was speaking as much to himself as to Rachel. He was
reasoning against the desire, which had returned with intensity, to take
her in his arms; to have done with indirectness; to explain exactly what
he felt. What he said was against his belief; all the things that were
important about her he knew; he felt them in the air around them; but he
said nothing; he went on arranging the stones.
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