And to that it must come with every
one of us, for not until then are we true men, true women--the
children, that is, of him in whose image we are made.
Cosmo followed very willingly, longing for water and a
clothes-brush rather than for food. The cold and damp, fatigue and
exposure of the night were telling upon him more than he knew, and
all the time he was at work, he had been cramped by hitherto
unknown pains in his limbs.
The gardener brought him to the half-ruinous wing already
mentioned, to a small kitchen, opening under a great sloping
buttress, and presented him to his wife, an English woman, some ten
years younger than himself. She received him with a dignified
retraction of the feelers, but the moment she understood his needs,
ministered to them, and had some breakfast ready for him by the
time he had made his toilet. He sat down by her little fire, and
drank some tea, but felt shivery, and could not eat. In dread lest,
if he yielded a moment to the invading sickness, it should at once
overpower him, he made haste to get out again into the sun, and
rejoined the old man, who had gone back to his cabbage-ground.
There he pulled off his coat, and once more seized the spade, for
work seemed the only way of meeting his enemy hand to hand. But the
moment he began, he was too hot, and the moment he took breath he
was ready to shiver. As long as he could stand, however, he would
not give in.
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