abeyance, slowly rising to the surface and creating the great ache of
unrest, and stupor of discontent. The bruise was deep, deep, deep...the
bruise of the false inhuman war. It would take many years for the living
blood of the generations to dissolve the vast black clot of bruised blood,
deep inside their souls and bodies. And it would need a new hope.
Poor Connie! As the years drew on it was the fear of nothingness In her
life that affected her. Clifford's mental life and hers gradually began to
feel like nothingness. Their marriage, their integrated life based on a
habit of intimacy, that he talked about: there were days when it all became
utterly blank and nothing. It was words, just so many words. The only
reality was nothingness, and over it a hypocrisy of words.
There was Clifford's success: the bitch-goddess! It was true he was
almost famous, and his books brought him in a thousand pounds. His
photograph appeared everywhere. There was a bust of him in one of the
galleries, and a portrait of him in two galleries. He seemed the most modern
of modern voices. With his uncanny lame instinct for publicity, he had
become in four or five years one of the best known of the young
`intellectuals'. Where the intellect came in, Connie did not quite see.
Clifford was really clever at that slightly humorous analysis of people and
motives which leaves everything in bits at the end. But it was rather like
puppies tearing the sofa cushions to bits; except that it was not young and
playful, but curiously old, and rather obstinately conceited. It was weird
and it was nothing. This was the feeling that echoed and re-echoed at the
bottom of Connie's soul: it was all flag, a wonderful display of
nothingness; At the same time a display. A display! a display! a display!
Michaelis had seized upon Clifford as the central figure for a play;
already he had sketched in the plot, and written the first act. For
Michaelis was even better than Clifford at making a display of nothingness.
It was the last bit of passion left in these men: the passion for making a
display. Sexually they were passionless, even dead. And now it was not money
that Michaelis was after. Clifford had never been primarily out for money,
though he made it where he could, for money is the seal and stamp of
success. And success was what they wanted. They wanted, both of them, to
make a real display...a man's own very display of himself that should
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