When they were gone I went out with Maud. I was at my very worst, I
fear; full of heaviness and deeply disquieted; desiring I knew well
what--some quickening of emotion, some hopeful impulse--but utterly
unable to attain it. We had a very sad talk. I tried to make it
clear to her how desolate I felt, and to win some kind of
forgiveness for my sterile and loveless mood. She tried to comfort
me; she said that it was only like passing through a tunnel; she
made it clear to me, by some unspoken communication, that I was
dearer than ever to her in these days of sorrow; but there was a
shadow in her mind, the shadow that fell from the loneliness in
which I moved, the sense that she could not share my misery with
me. I tried to show her that the one thing one could not share was
emptiness. If one's cup is full of interests, plans, happinesses,
even tangible anxieties, it is easy and natural to make them known
to one whom one loves best. But one cannot share the horror of the
formless dark; the vacuous and tortured mind. It is the dark
absence of anything that is the source of my wretchedness. If there
were pain, grief, mournful energy of any kind, one could put it
into words; but how can one find expression for what is a total
eclipse?
It was not, I said, that anything had come between her and me; but
I seemed to be remote, withdrawn, laid apart like some stiffening
corpse in the tomb.
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