Her thin
bosom shrugged convulsively. He stared back at her, devilish and
unchanging. With another strange, sick convulsion, she turned away, as
if she were sick, could feel dissolution setting-in in her body. For
with her mind she was unable to attend to his words, he caught her, as
it were, beneath all her defences, and destroyed her with some
insidious occult potency.
'Yes,' she said, as if she did not know what she were saying. 'Yes,'
and she swallowed, and tried to regain her mind. But she could not, she
was witless, decentralised. Use all her will as she might, she could
not recover. She suffered the ghastliness of dissolution, broken and
gone in a horrible corruption. And he stood and looked at her unmoved.
She strayed out, pallid and preyed-upon like a ghost, like one attacked
by the tomb-influences which dog us. And she was gone like a corpse,
that has no presence, no connection. He remained hard and vindictive.
Hermione came down to dinner strange and sepulchral, her eyes heavy and
full of sepulchral darkness, strength.
Pages:
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189