His intellectual content seemed to submit
passively to it, and it fitted like a glove everything that had ever
preceded it in his life. It did not muddle him. It was like a problem
whose answer he knew on paper, yet whose solution he was unable to grasp.
He was far beyond horror. He had sunk through the thin surface of that,
now moved in a region where the feet and the fear of white walls were
real, living things, things he must accept. Only far inside his soul a
little fire leaped and cried that something was pulling him down, trying
to get him inside a door and slam it behind him. After that door
was slammed there would be only footfalls and white buildings in the
moonlight, and perhaps he would be one of the footfalls.
During the five or ten minutes he waited in the shadow of the fence,
there was somehow this fire . . . that was as near as he could name it
afterward. He remembered calling aloud:
"I want some one stupid. Oh, send some one stupid!" This to the
black fence opposite him, in whose shadows the footsteps shuffled
. . . shuffled. He supposed "stupid" and "good" had become somehow
intermingled through previous association.
Pages:
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184