He felt as if he were waiting, as if somehow he were stationary among
things that passed over him and around him, voices, people's bodies,
birds, only Rachel too was waiting with him. He looked at her sometimes
as if she must know that they were waiting together, and being drawn on
together, without being able to offer any resistance. Again he read from
his book:
Whoever you are holding me now in your hand,
Without one thing all will be useless.
A bird gave a wild laugh, a monkey chuckled a malicious question, and,
as fire fades in the hot sunshine, his words flickered and went out.
By degrees as the river narrowed, and the high sandbanks fell to level
ground thickly grown with trees, the sounds of the forest could be
heard. It echoed like a hall. There were sudden cries; and then long
spaces of silence, such as there are in a cathedral when a boy's voice
has ceased and the echo of it still seems to haunt about the remote
places of the roof. Once Mr. Flushing rose and spoke to a sailor, and
even announced that some time after luncheon the steamer would stop, and
they could walk a little way through the forest.
"There are tracks all through the trees there," he explained. "We're no
distance from civilisation yet."
He scrutinised his wife's painting. Too polite to praise it openly,
he contented himself with cutting off one half of the picture with one
hand, and giving a flourish in the air with the other.
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