At this time she began to hear voices speaking to her. In the dark of the night or in the cold bright days when she lay in her bed, the windows opened wide, she would stare at the faded rose and pearl of the ceiling or the faded gray of the walls, and the winter knocking of the woodpeckers among the trees about the house would fit into her sense of light and become identical with it. She would lie in an apathy, scarcely breathing, divided in mind, uncoördinated by hunger and unintegrated by pain. Lying thus one day, looking at the woodpecker’s cry as it lay along the ceiling and was interlaced with the faded rose and pearl of the vignettes there, a first voice spoke to her, saying, “The categories of the flesh....” The words receded when they had been said, leaving ripples of flat tone behind, flat words that rode on some rhythm. When the words had receded beyond the reach of hearing and her ears were dulled with listening to their spent rhythms, the voice spoke suddenly again. FIRST VOICE: The categories of the flesh. “What are they?” she asked, her own voice as real as that which had spoken and as earnest. She began to turn the saying about to see what it would give. Then another voice spoke sharply, swiftly, a hard voice blurting out its rough saying. SECOND VOICE: The hunger of the mouth. An inner voice spoke then, a third speaker, more, subtle and persuasive, saying, “And then there’s Frank.” FIRST VOICE: A category too. He is. THEODOSIA: Well, then, well? An occurrence—one happening.... She was dull to Frank, to any reminder of him. She stirred wearily in the bed and drew her knees together, crossing her feet. FIRST VOICE: The intense will to continue is centered in the individual organism, and thus, or for this, the matter of continuation is entrusted to the instance. THIRD VOICE: Brain turned into a walnut and then got a worm in it.... THEODOSIA: The genteel poor. I’ve always heard it said they were the greatest sufferers on the earth. FIRST VOICE: And suppose, as Science says, it’s unlikely that there’s anything comparable to human life on any other planets. Human life, then, lonely in the great space of the sky, swinging around through space without greeting, without advice or sympathy, afraid. SECOND VOICE: Drunk to get more of itself! THIRD VOICE: What if.... Suppose she got more. She. Theodosia. SECOND VOICE: Love of God! What would it be? THEODOSIA: Nothing comparable to life on any other.... Human life, that is. It must look strange from the outside, this one, when you see the whole lot come in a whirl around the sun. Mercury first, then Venus, then the one with life on it. Maybe it makes it look different. Pain, try-to-do, try-again. Stuff that can look up and down on it, stuff that can say, “God, God!”