After this Terence could no longer stay downstairs. He went up, knocked
at Rachel's door, and asked Helen whether he might see her for a few
minutes. He had not seen her yesterday. She made no objection, and went
and sat at a table in the window.
Terence sat down by the bedside. Rachel's face was changed. She looked
as though she were entirely concentrated upon the effort of keeping
alive. Her lips were drawn, and her cheeks were sunken and flushed,
though without colour. Her eyes were not entirely shut, the lower half
of the white part showing, not as if she saw, but as if they remained
open because she was too much exhausted to close them. She opened them
completely when he kissed her. But she only saw an old woman slicing a
man's head off with a knife.
"There it falls!" she murmured. She then turned to Terence and asked
him anxiously some question about a man with mules, which he could not
understand. "Why doesn't he come? Why doesn't he come?" she repeated. He
was appalled to think of the dirty little man downstairs in connection
with illness like this, and turning instinctively to Helen, but she was
doing something at a table in the window, and did not seem to realise
how great the shock to him must be. He rose to go, for he could not
endure to listen any longer; his heart beat quickly and painfully with
anger and misery.
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