Ay, I was in prison. I could not go out or come in
at will. I was watched, commanded at every turn. I was a brute animal, a
puppet, a doll, that children put away in a cupboard, and there it lies.
And yet my whole soul was as wide, fierce, roving, struggling as ever.
Horrible contradiction! The dreadful sense of helplessness, the crushing
weight of necessity, seemed to choke me. The smooth white walls, the
smooth white ceiling, seemed squeezing in closer and closer on me, and yet
dilating into vast inane infinities, just as the merest knot of mould
will transform itself, as one watches it, and nothing else, into enormous
cliffs, long slopes of moor, and spurs of mountain-range. Oh, those smooth
white walls and ceilings! If there had but been a print--a stain of dirt--a
cobweb, to fleck their unbroken ghastliness! They stared at me, like grim,
impassive, featureless formless fiends; all the more dreadful for their
sleek, hypocritic cleanliness--purity as of a saint-inquisitor watching
with spotless conscience the victim on the rack. They choked me--I gasped
for breath, stretched out my arms, rolled shrieking on the floor--the
narrow chequered glimpse of free blue sky, seen through the window, seemed
to fade dimmer and dimmer, farther and farther off.
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