Words were like pebbles against an iron wall. They rang upon a sudden sense in Fanny of the bed she was in. Bed large and deep with hangings of lavender, bed all about her like strong arms of a mother she had never known yet hers!... Clara sharp within it ... sharp breasts, sharp thigh, sharp tenderness of stomach: and the vague black manform looming!... this bed about her. Its arms were warm and were hostile. There was care in them, mother’s care, and yet they had no sense in their great balm of what she was they shielded. Fanny lay ... the words of Clara reading against her were futile ... in the arms of an alien creature who had given her birth. Being of shame, being of denial of herself, and yet she was its thing. Fanny knew the ineffable rightness of her lying there, of her healing there: of this monstrous mother. From this she must suck life, from this which was of alien flesh and spirit she must build herself. Strange angry mother ... her own!... holding her life and lifting her above it. Words of Clara were little clangors, shells of sound far off. Fanny lay ... Clara’s bed! Clara’s bed and his!... enswooned in great arms muffling her and feeding. Very white.... She saw black earth, earth breaking against rock. In a crevice of stone through loam, through rotted brush and last year’s leaves she saw a root, swollen and livid-red, thrust a small green shoot: upon it pendant a cupped bud like a pearl. She saw in a Spring of sweeping clouds above a steaming earth, a blood-root blossom.... The clouds were gone, there was mist. There was earth lost in feathery warm mist. There were bursts of trees budding ... the feathery mist ... the blood-root. * * * * * Waking she saw this room. Clara’s cot empty. With covers thrown back it held in its sheets the impress of her body. Shades drawn. A purblind light soiled from its passage through the grey-brick airshaft lay on the blue and lavender like smut. A gilded radiator buzzed and spat.... Fanny heard Clara in the kitchen getting her breakfast. The negress maid did not appear before eleven: and this morning Clara was going to New Jersey to see a married sister who was very ill. She stood in the doorway. The sooty shade of the room lay in her face, filling the folds of resolution under eyes, beside her mouth, with a harsh darkness. --She is not well. She is not happy! Clara looks herself. --And the room--it is itself. Fanny felt salience in the ugly morning ... for the first time felt salience about her. --It’ll go. You’ll put up the shade. You’ll cover up these beds ... sheets speak. Some of the sunlight from across the way will filter in. Sun lies sometimes. These true shadows for seeing where I am will go. Fanny could not smile. “You’re still half asleep,” said Clara. “Want to sleep some more? Lucy could get you breakfast later on.” “No. I’m awake. You bring in the little table. Let’s breakfast together.”