There was a tight, hard pain in her
heart, like toothache, round which her whole body gathered, pressing,
impaled upon it; a sense of desperation, and yet at the heart of this,
like a nerve, the wonder if anything really mattered.
Ben had promised to reserve seats for his mother and herself; but had
he?--Had he? Would she find the place blocked by swells with their hard
stare, duchesses and such-like, glistening in diamonds? In her mind's
eye she saw billows of silk, slabs of black cloth and shining white
shirt-fronts--hundreds and hundreds of them. And Ben bowing, bowing to
them as she had taught him to do.
For some time past he had been so far away, so detached that she was
haunted by the fear that if she put out a finger to touch him it might
go through him, as though he were a ghost. At times she had caught him,
held him to her in a passion of love and longing. But even then, with
his head against her heart, his lips, or some pulse or nerve, had moved
in a wordless tune, the beat of time.
If only he had still seemed to need her, nothing, nothing would have
mattered.
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