It
wasn't that he found an actual analogy between the pig and life,
individuals, on a higher plane, so much as that he was vaguely
disturbed by the impression that there was an ultimate similitude
between him, Lee Randon, and a fattened somnolence of existence.
After all, were his individual opinions and doubts expressed in a
manner forceful enough to diversify him from a porcine apathy? The pig,
secure against the inequalities of fate and weather, wallowed through
life with a dull fullness of food as regular as the solar course.
Christopher was his wife. Now that, Lee told himself, with a vision of
the gardener's moustache, sadly drooping and stained with tobacco, his
pale doubtful gaze, was inexcusable. He abruptly directed his thoughts
to Peyton and Claire Morris; how exact Claire had been in the
expression of her personality! What, he grasped, was different in her
from other women was precisely that; together with an astonishing lack
of sentimental bias, it operated with the cutting realism of a
surgeon's blade. She had, as well, courage.
That was the result of her heritage; and he wondered if all strong
traits were the action of superior blood strayed into expected and
unexpected places? It was probable, but not susceptible of proof. The
pig's blood was that of the best registered Berkshire. God damn the
pig!
He asked Fanny if she had heard any further particulars of the proposed
rearrangement of the Morrises' lives; when they were to separate; but
she knew no more than he.
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