[Night and Day by Virginia Woolf]@TWC D-Link book
Night and Day

CHAPTER XVIII
11/58

America!" she cried.

"That's the place for me! They'll teach me something about organizing a movement there, and I'll come back and show you how to do it." If she meant consciously or unconsciously to belittle the seclusion and security of a country cottage, she did not succeed; for Ralph's determination was genuine.

But she made him visualize her in her own character, so that he looked quickly at her, as she walked a little in front of him across the plowed field; for the first time that morning he saw her independently of him or of his preoccupation with Katharine.
He seemed to see her marching ahead, a rather clumsy but powerful and independent figure, for whose courage he felt the greatest respect.
"Don't go away, Mary!" he exclaimed, and stopped.
"That's what you said before, Ralph," she returned, without looking at him.

"You want to go away yourself and you don't want me to go away.
That's not very sensible, is it ?" "Mary," he cried, stung by the remembrance of his exacting and dictatorial ways with her, "what a brute I've been to you!" It took all her strength to keep the tears from springing, and to thrust back her assurance that she would forgive him till Doomsday if he chose.
She was preserved from doing so only by a stubborn kind of respect for herself which lay at the root of her nature and forbade surrender, even in moments of almost overwhelming passion.

Now, when all was tempest and high-running waves, she knew of a land where the sun shone clear upon Italian grammars and files of docketed papers.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books