The woman was still
playing cards, only she sat now in a tunnel under a river, and the light
stood in a little archway in the wall above her. She cried "Terence!"
and the peaked shadow again moved across the ceiling, as the woman with
an enormous slow movement rose, and they both stood still above her.
"It's just as difficult to keep you in bed as it was to keep Mr. Forrest
in bed," the woman said, "and he was such a tall gentleman."
In order to get rid of this terrible stationary sight Rachel again shut
her eyes, and found herself walking through a tunnel under the Thames,
where there were little deformed women sitting in archways playing
cards, while the bricks of which the wall was made oozed with damp,
which collected into drops and slid down the wall. But the little old
women became Helen and Nurse McInnis after a time, standing in the
window together whispering, whispering incessantly.
Meanwhile outside her room the sounds, the movements, and the lives of
the other people in the house went on in the ordinary light of the sun,
throughout the usual succession of hours. When, on the first day of her
illness, it became clear that she would not be absolutely well, for her
temperature was very high, until Friday, that day being Tuesday, Terence
was filled with resentment, not against her, but against the force
outside them which was separating them.
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