The tea was drunk, the toast lay about
in fragments. One bit, hard and many cornered as it seemed, somehow
gained entrance to the bed, and greeted Cuckoo's every movement with
uncompromising grittiness. No shaking of coverlet and sheet, no beating
of pillow, no kicks and scufflings could expel it. The bed seemed full of
hard bits of toast, and Cuckoo felt as if an additional burden were laid
upon her by this slight evil. But, indeed, the horror of her existence
reached a culminating point to-day,--a point of loneliness, vacant
dreariness, squalor, and degradation that could not be surpassed. The
preceding night had been peculiarly horrible, and as Cuckoo now lay on
the tumbled bed, in the dim, cold room, with the fog gazing in, the
leaden hours of winter crawling by, she felt as if she could bear no
more. She could bear no more addition to her sick weariness; no more
addition to her useless hunger of love for Julian, that could never
be crowned with anything but despair; no more addition to her bodily
fatigue, born of tramping monotony succeeded by yet more enervating
weariness of the flesh. She could bear no more. Yes, but she must bear
more. For Cuckoo knew that she was not dying, was not even ill. She was
only tired in body, prostrate in heart, deserted in life, and forced to
witness the quick and running ruin of the man she had the farcical
absurdity to love.
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