For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end
of that time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at
work--an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness,
jogging and pulling him awake. At eight o'clock he sat up. A cramped
pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He looked at them, and mechanically
shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after
two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his hands
again, smiling.
'It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,' he said to
himself.
His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if
weighted with lead. He could think only one detached sentence at
intervals. Between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.
'I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,' he said to himself, and
instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere. 'But I
must be getting ready. I can't disappoint her,' said Siegmund.
The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to
her, 'Do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,' then he might lie
down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head. If
she could hold his head in her hands--for she had fine, silken hands
that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up
in life--then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest.
This was the one thing that remained for his restoration--that she
should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. He longed for
it utterly--for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.
'But it is no good,' he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep.
'What time is it?' It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was
time he should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.
'I am forgetting again,' he said. 'But I do not want to go. What is the
good? I have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.' He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep.
Suddenly he started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.
'Goodness,' he said, 'it's getting quite dark!' It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to
wash in cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and
his face blazed with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual. It
was ten minutes to ten. He would be very late. It was practically dark,
though these bright days were endless. He wondered whether the children
were in bed. It was too late, however, to wonder.