It had nothing to do with Italy, or any other
country; his intentness had been withdrawn from the surfaces of life,
however charming; they had plunged into the profounder mysteries of
being. Lee had gained nothing if not a certain freedom from exterior
circumstance; his implied revolt against trivialities, if it did no
other good, had at least liberated him from the furniture of existence.
However, it had begun to appear that this was not an unmixed blessing;
he had the uncomfortable sensation of having put out, on a limitless
sea, in a very little boat too late to arrive at any far hidden
desirable coast.
Claire shivered, and, discovering that she was cold, he insisted on her
going upstairs. "To my pure sheets," she said, with a touch of her
familiar daring. Left alone, Lee was depressed by the hour; the room,
his house, seemed strange, meaningless, to him. There was a menace in
the unnatural stillness; Fanny's unfinished handkerchief, her stool,
were without the warmth of familiar association. It might have been a
place into which he had wandered by accident, where he didn't belong,
wouldn't stay. It was inconceivable that, above him, his wife and
children were sleeping; the ceiling, the supine heavy bodies, seemed to
sag until they rested on his shoulders; he was, like Atlas, holding the
whole house up. It was with acute difficulty that he shook off the
illusion, the weight.
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