never seen. But what of that! There were parts of her own body which she
had never seen, which physiologically she could never see. They were
none the less her own because she had never seen them. The lands she had
not seen were corporate parts of her own living body, the knowledge she
had not attained was only the hidden knowledge of her own self. She
_was_ the substance of the knowledge, whether she had the knowledge in
her mind or not. There was nothing which was not herself, ultimately.
Even the man, the male, was part of herself. He was the mobile, separate
part, but he was none the less herself because he was sometimes severed
from her. If every apple in the world were cut in two, the apple would
not be changed. The reality is the apple, which is just the same in the
half-apple as in the whole.

And she, the old spinning-woman, was the apple, eternal, unchangeable,
whole even in her partiality. It was this which gave the wonderful clear
unconsciousness to her eyes. How could she be conscious of herself when
all was herself?

She was talking to me of a sheep that had died, but I could not
understand because of her dialect. It never occurred to her that I could
not understand. She only thought me different, stupid. And she talked
on. The ewes had lived under the house, and a part was divided off for
the he-goat, because the other people brought their she-goats to be
covered by the he-goat. But how the ewe came to die I could not
make out.

Her fingers worked away all the time in a little, half-fretful movement,
yet spontaneous as butterflies leaping here and there. She chattered
rapidly on in her Italian that I could not understand, looking meanwhile
into my face, because the story roused her somewhat. Yet not a feature