' Sometimes it was he who seemed
strongest, whist she was almost gone, creeping near the earth like a
spent wind; sometimes it was the reverse. But always it was this
eternal see-saw, one destroyed that the other might exist, one ratified
because the other was nulled.
'In the end,' she said to herself, 'I shall go away from him.'
'I can be free of her,' he said to himself in his paroxysms of
suffering.
And he set himself to be free. He even prepared to go away, to leave
her in the lurch. But for the first time there was a flaw in his will.
'Where shall I go?' he asked himself.
'Can't you be self-sufficient?' he replied to himself, putting himself
upon his pride.
'Self-sufficient!' he repeated.
It seemed to him that Gudrun was sufficient unto herself, closed round
and completed, like a thing in a case. In the calm, static reason of
his soul, he recognised this, and admitted it was her right, to be
closed round upon herself, self-complete, without desire. He realised
it, he admitted it, it only needed one last effort on his own part, to
win for himself the same completeness.
Pages:
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921