MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-2

[3952] But at the same time I kept my eye on the shelter, which drew me with ^an
extraordinary ^pull, so that to cut across from the terminus of one sally
to the terminus of the next, and so on, which would have been convenient,
was out of the question. [3953] But each time I had to retrace my steps, the way
I had come, to the shelter, and make sure all was in order, before I sallied
forth again. [3954] And I consumed the greater part of this second day in these
vain comings and goings, these vigils and imaginings, but not all of it.

[3955] For I also lay down from time to time in the shelter, which I was beginning
to think of as my little house, to ruminate in peace on certain things, and
notably on my provisions of food which were rapidly running out, so that
after a meal devoured at five o'clock I was left with only two tins of
sardines, a handful of biscuits and a few apples. [3956] But I also tried to
remember what I was to do with Molloy, once I had found him.

[3957] And on myself
too I pored, on me so changed from what I was. [3958] And I seemed to see myself
ageing as swiftly as a day-fly. [3959] But the idea of ageing was not exactly the
one which offered itself to me. [3960] And what I saw was more like a crumbling,
a frenzied ^collapsing of all that had always protected me from all I was
always condemned to be.

[3961] Or it was like a kind of clawing towards a light
and countenance I could not name, that I had once known and long denied.
[3962] But what words can describe this sensation at first all darkness and bulk,
with a noise like the grinding of stones, then suddenly as soft as water
flowing.

[3963] And then I saw a little globe swaying up slowly from the depths,
through the quiet water, smooth at first, and scarcely paler than its
escorting ripples, then little by little a face, with holes for the eyes
and mouth and other wounds, and nothing to show if it was a man's face or
a woman's face, a young face or an old face, or if its calm too was not an
effect of the water trembling between it and the light. [3964] But I confess I
attended but absently to these poor figures, in which I suppose my sense