She was astonished at her own cruelty as she thought this. It was as if some aching conscience, which Edward’s presence had been, was suddenly stilled. No, she said to herself, a suicide is not a simple death, bringing peace with it. It haunts; it asks a question. She saw that the argument had now gone down to a level where it would have to be fought not with reason, but with life itself. And fighting a dead man was a more complicated, a more painful affair than fighting a living one. It was no end, it was only the continuation on a different level—but at this point, she suddenly felt faint. She sat very still, waiting for the dizziness to pass. When it did pass, she lay back in the chair, her eyes closed.

Until this moment she had really felt nothing. She had been frantically racing along trying not to feel, trying to get to some intellectual rational plane where she could turn and face the feeling and not be overwhelmed.