THE WINDOWAnd the whole of the effort of merging andflowing and creating rested on her. Again shefelt, as a fact without hostility, the sterilityof men, for if she did not do it nobody woulddo it, and so, giving herself the little shake thatone gives a watch that has stopped, the oldfamiliar pulse began beating, as the watchbegins ticking—one, two, three, one, two,three. And so on and so on, she repeated,listening to it, sheltering and fostering the stillfeeble pulse as one might guard a weak flamewith a newspaper. And so then, she con-cluded, addressing herself by bending silentlyin his direction to William Bankes—poor man!who had no wife and no children, and dined alonein lodgings except for to-night; and in pity forhim, life being now strong enough to bear heron again, she began all this business, as a sailornot without weariness sees the wind fill his sailand yet hardly wants to be off again and thinkshow, had the ship sunk, he would have whirledround and round and found rest on the floor ofthe sea.

"Did you find your letters? I told them toput them in the hall for you," she said to WilliamBankes.

Lily Briscoe watched her drifting into thatstrange no-man’s land where to follow people is131
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