In the Wilderness by Robert Smythe Hichens
page 22 of 944 (02%)
page 22 of 944 (02%)
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Then he added:
"_Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat_. When the insistent _I_ sleeps, only then perhaps can the heart be truly awake, be really watchful. Then let us send the insistent I to sleep, and let us keep it slumbering." He half-smiled as he finished. There had been something slightly whimsical about his final words, about his manner and himself when he said them. Silence and the fog, and Rosamund walking homewards with her hands deep in her muff. All those bodies and minds and souls which had been in the church had evaporated into the night. Mrs. Chetwinde and Esme Darlington had wanted to speak to Rosamund, but she had slipped out of the church quickly. She did not wish to talk to any one. "_Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat_." What an odd little turn, or twist, the preacher had given to the meaning of those words! "Whenever you have to take some big decision between two life courses, ask yourself, 'Which can I share?' and if you can only share one, choose that." Very slowly Rosamund walked on, bending a little above the big muff, like one pulled forward by a weight of heavy thoughts. She turned a corner. Presently she turned another corner and traversed a square, which could not be seen to be a square. And then, quite suddenly, she realized that she had not been thinking about her way home and that she was lost in the impenetrable fog. |
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