And she
saw her father--first as the tall, dirty man whom she used to know,
with the shiny black trousers, the untidy beard, the frowning eyes,
the nails bitten to the quick, the ragged shirt-cuffs--then as that
veiled shape below the clothes, the lift of the sheet above the
toes, the loins, the stomach, the beard neatly brushed, the closed
yellow eyelids, the yellow forehead, the rats with their gleaming
eyes. In a kind of terror as though she were being led against her
will into some disgusting chamber where the skulls were stale and
the sights indecent, she saw the friendship of those two--Ellen the
cook and her father.
Young, inexperienced though she was, she was old already in a
certain crude knowledge of facts. It could not be said that she
traced to their ultimate hiding-place the relations of her father
and the woman, but in some relation, ugly, sordid, degraded, she saw
those two figures united. Many, many little things came to her mind
as she sat there, moments when the cook had breathlessly and in a
sudden heat betrayed some unexpected agitation, moments when her
father had shown confusion, moments when she had fancied whispers,
laughter behind walls, scurrying feet.
Pages:
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82