It seemed to her
he was never satisfied unless there was some sordid tale being poured
out to him, which he drank in with a sort of mournful, sympathetic
satisfaction. He would have no RAISON D'ETRE if there were no
lugubrious miseries in the world, as an undertaker would have no
meaning if there were no funerals.
Mrs Crich recoiled back upon herself, she recoiled away from this world
of creeping democracy. A band of tight, baleful exclusion fastened
round her heart, her isolation was fierce and hard, her antagonism was
passive but terribly pure, like that of a hawk in a cage. As the years
went on, she lost more and more count of the world, she seemed rapt in
some glittering abstraction, almost purely unconscious. She would
wander about the house and about the surrounding country, staring
keenly and seeing nothing. She rarely spoke, she had no connection with
the world. And she did not even think. She was consumed in a fierce
tension of opposition, like the negative pole of a magnet.
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