.. alone, alone... one on the earth... and my girth
have a spread of 25,000 miles... what will happen to my mind? Into what
kind of creature shall I writhe and change? I may live two years so!
What will have happened then? I may live five years--ten! What will have
happened after the five? the ten? I may live twenty, thirty, forty...'
Already, already, there are things that peep and sprout within me...!
* * * * *
I wanted food and fresh running water, and walked from the engine half a
mile through fields of lucerne whose luxuriance quite hid the
foot-paths, and reached my shoulder. After turning the brow of a hill, I
came to a park, passing through which I saw some dead deer and three
persons, and emerged upon a terraced lawn, at the end of which stood an
Early English house of pale brick with copings, plinths, stringcourses
of limestone, and spandrels of carved marble; and some distance from the
porch a long table, or series of tables, in the open air, still spread
with cloths that were like shrouds after a month of burial; and the
table had old foods on it, and some lamps; and all around it, and all on
the lawn, were dead peasants.
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