All these sights and sounds appeared sinister and full of hostility and
foreboding; together with the natives and the nurse and the doctor and
the terrible force of the illness itself they seemed to be in conspiracy
against him. They seemed to join together in their effort to extract the
greatest possible amount of suffering from him. He could not get used to
his pain, it was a revelation to him. He had never realised before that
underneath every action, underneath the life of every day, pain lies,
quiescent, but ready to devour; he seemed to be able to see suffering,
as if it were a fire, curling up over the edges of all action, eating
away the lives of men and women. He thought for the first time with
understanding of words which had before seemed to him empty: the
struggle of life; the hardness of life. Now he knew for himself that
life is hard and full of suffering. He looked at the scattered lights in
the town beneath, and thought of Arthur and Susan, or Evelyn and Perrott
venturing out unwittingly, and by their happiness laying themselves
open to suffering such as this. How did they dare to love each other, he
wondered; how had he himself dared to live as he had lived, rapidly and
carelessly, passing from one thing to another, loving Rachel as he had
loved her? Never again would he feel secure; he would never believe in
the stability of life, or forget what depths of pain lie beneath small
happiness and feelings of content and safety.
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