She read all the modern poets and novelists she cared about,
English and foreign. They left her stimulated but unsatisfied. There
were not enough good ones to keep her going. She worked through the
Elizabethan dramatists and all the Vicar's Tudor Classics, and came
on Jowett's Translations of the Platonic Dialogues by the way, and
was lured on the quest of Ultimate Reality, and found that there
was nothing like Thought to keep you from thinking. She took to
metaphysics as you take to dram-drinking. She must have strong, heavy
stuff that drugged her brain. And when she found that she could trust
her intellect she set it deliberately to fight her passion.
At first it was an even match, for Gwenda's intellect, like her body,
was robust. It generally held its ground from Thursday morning till
Tuesday night. But the night that followed Wednesday afternoon would
see its overthrow.
This Wednesday it fought gallantly till the very moment of Steven's
arrival. She was still reading Bergson, and her brain struggled to
make out the sense and rhythm of the sentences across the beating of
her heart.
After seven years her heart still beat at Steven's coming.
It remained an excitement and adventure, for she never knew how
he would be. Sometimes he hadn't a word to say to her and left her
miserable. Sometimes, after a hard day's work, he would be tired
and heavy; she saw him middle-aged and her heart would ache for him.
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