awe. Everything was toppling over. He blinked his eyes
quickly, and it seemed to him that the very sunshine of the morning
disclosed in its brightness a suggestion of some hidden and sinister
meaning. In his unreasoning fear he tried to hide within himself. He
drew his feet up, his head sank between his shoulders, his arms hugged
his sides. Under the high and enormous tree soaring superbly out of the
mist in a vigorous spread of lofty boughs, with a restless and eager
flutter of its innumerable leaves in the clear sunshine, he remained
motionless, huddled up on his seat: terrified and still.

Willems' gaze roamed over the ground, and then he watched with idiotic
fixity half a dozen black ants entering courageously a tuft of long
grass which, to them, must have appeared a dark and a dangerous jungle.
Suddenly he thought: There must be something dead in there. Some dead
insect. Death everywhere! He closed his eyes again in an access of
trembling pain. Death everywhere--wherever one looks. He did not want to
see the ants. He did not want to see anybody or anything. He sat in the
darkness of his own making, reflecting bitterly that there was no peace
for him. He heard voices now. . . . Illusion! Misery! Torment! Who would
come? Who would speak to him? What business had he to hear voices? . . .
yet he heard them faintly, from the river. Faintly, as if shouted far
off over there, came the words "We come back soon." . . . Delirium and
mockery! Who would come back? Nobody ever comes back! Fever comes back.
He had it on him this morning. That was it. . . . He heard unexpectedly
the old woman muttering something near by. She had come round to his
side of the tree. He opened his eyes and saw her bent back before
him. She stood, with her hand shading her eyes, looking towards the
landing-place. Then she glided away. She had seen--and now she was going
back to her cooking; a woman incurious; expecting nothing; without fear
and without hope.

She had gone back behind the tree, and now Willems could see a human
figure on the path to the landing-place. It appeared to him to be a
woman, in a red gown, holding some heavy bundle in her arms; it was an
apparition unexpected, familiar and odd. He cursed through his teeth
. . . It had wanted only this! See things like that in broad daylight!
He was very bad--very bad. . . . He was horribly scared at this awful
symptom of the desperate state of his health.

This scare lasted for the space