Calamy allowed his hand to be kissed, and as soon as it was decently possible gently withdrew it. Invisibly, in the darkness, he made a little grimace of impatience. He was no longer interested in kisses, at the moment. “Yes,” he said meditatively, “that’s one way of thinking of my hand, that’s one way in which it exists and is real. Certainly. And that was what I was thinking about—all the different ways in which these five fingers”—he held them up again, splayed out, against the window’s oblong of paler darkness—“have reality and exist. All the different ways,” he repeated slowly. “If you think of that, even for five minutes, you find yourself plunged up to the eyes in the most portentous mysteries.” He was silent for a moment; then added in a very serious voice. “And I believe that if one could stand the strain of thinking really hard about one thing—this hand, for example—really hard for several days, or weeks, or months, one might be able to burrow one’s way right through the mystery and really get at something—some kind of truth, some explanation.” He paused, frowning. Down and down, through the obscurity, he was thinking. Slowly, painfully, like Milton’s Devil, pushing his way through chaos; in the end, one might emerge into the light, to see the universe, sphere within sphere, hanging from the floor of heaven. But it would be a slow, laborious process; one would need time, one would need freedom. Above everything, freedom. “Why don’t you think about me?” Mary Thriplow asked. She propped herself up on one elbow and leaned over him; with her other hand she ruffled his hair. “Don’t I bear thinking about?” she asked. She had a fistful of his thick hair in her hand; softly she tugged at it, testingly, as though she were preparing for something worse, were assuring her grip for a more violent pull. She felt a desire to hurt him. Even in her arms, she was thinking, he escaped her, he simply wasn’t there. “Don’t I bear thinking about?” she repeated, tugging a little harder at his hair. Calamy said nothing. The truth was, he was reflecting, that she didn’t bear thinking about. Like a good many other things. All one’s daily life was a skating over thin ice, was a scampering of water-beetles across the invisible skin of depths. Stamp a little too hard, lean a shade too heavily and you were through, you were floundering in a dangerous and unfamiliar element. This love business, for example—it simply couldn’t be thought of; it could only support one on condition that one never stopped to think. But it was necessary to think, necessary to break through and sink into the depths. And yet, insanely and desperately, one still went skating on. “Do you love me?” asked Mary. “Of course,” he said; but the tone of his voice did not carry much conviction.