MS-WU-MSS008-2-47

[1579] so it was very probably the afternoon, very. [1580] The still air,
though not cold as in winter, seemed without promise or memory
of warmth. [1581] Incommoded by the rain pouring into his hat through
the crack ^{[place = inline] ,} Macmann took it off and laid it on his temple, that
is to say turned his head and pressed his cheek to the ground.

[1582] His hands at the ends of the long outstretched arms clutched
the grass, each hand a tuft, with as much energy as if he had
been spreadeagled against the face of cliff. [1583] Let us by all means
continue this description.

[1584] The rain pelted down on his back with
the sound first of a drum, but of in a short time of washing,
as when washing is soused gurgling and squelching in a tub, and
he distinguished clearly and with interest the difference in noise
of the rain falling on him and falling on the earth.

[1584] For his ear,
which is on the same plane as the cheek or nearly, was glued to
the earth in a way it seldom is in wet weather, and he could hear
the kind of distant roar of the earth drinking and the sighing
of the soaked bowed grasses.

[1585] The idea of punishment came to hs
his mind, addicted it is true to that chimera and probably im-
pressed by the posture of the body and the fingers clenched as
though in torment. [1586] And without knowing exactly what his sin was
he felt full well that living was not a sufficient atonement for
it or that this atonement was in itself a sin, calling for other
atonements more atonement, and so on, as if there could be
anything but life, for the living.

[1587] And no doubt he would have
wondered if it was really necessary to be guilty in order to be
punished but for the more memory, more and more galling, i ^{[place = inline] [⁁] [place = margin left] o}[ ^{[place = supralinear] o}]f his
having consented to live in his mother, then to leave her. [1588] And