with Mrs Stiles. How many times, I think, have I mounted them, since then? How many times has my heel struck this spot, that spot? How many slippers, how many strait gowns, how many gloves, have I outgrown or outworn? How many voluptuous words have I silently read?—how many mouthed, for gentlemen?
The stairs, the slippers and gloves, the words, the gentlemen, will all remain, though I escape. Will they? I think again of the rooms of my uncle''s house: the dining- and drawing-room, the library. I think of the little crescent I once picked out in the paint that covers the library windows: I try to imagine it, eyeless. I remember how once I woke and watched my room seem to gather itself together out of the dark, and thought, / shall never escape! Now I know that I shall. But I think that Briar will haunt me, too.— Or else, I will haunt it, while living out some dim and partial life beyond its walls.
I think of the ghost I shall make: a neat, monotonous ghost,
walking for ever on soft-soled feet, through a broken house, to the pattern of ancient carpets.
But perhaps, after all, I am a ghost already. For I go to Sue and she shows me the gowns and linens she means for us to take, the jewels she means to shine, the bags she will fill; but she does it all without meeting my gaze; and I watch, and say nothing. I am more aware of her hands than of the objects she takes up; feel the stir of her breath, see the movement of her lip, but her words slip from my memory the moment she has said them. At last she has nothing more to show. We must only wait. We take our lunch. We walk to my mother''s grave. I stare at the stone, feeling nothing. The day is mild, and damp: our shoes, as we walk, press dew from the springing green earth and mark our gowns with streaks of mud.