Something made him go and touch her fingers that were still
grasped on the sheet. Her brown-grey eyes opened and looked at
him. She did not know him as himself. But she knew him as the
man. She looked at him as a woman in childbirth looks at the man
who begot the child in her: an impersonal look, in the extreme
hour, female to male. Her eyes closed again. A great, scalding
peace went over him, burning his heart and his entrails, passing
off into the infinite.
When her pains began afresh, tearing her, he turned aside,
and could not look. But his heart in torture was at peace, his
bowels were glad. He went downstairs, and to the door, outside,
lifted his face to the rain, and felt the darkness striking
unseen and steadily upon him.
The swift, unseen threshing of the night upon him silenced
him and he was overcome. He turned away indoors, humbly. There
was the infinite world, eternal, unchanging, as well as the
world of life.