"I've had rough handling," he said, and gasped. "It's too fresh--too hot. I don't want to talk about it." He sat down with an unavoidable air of sullenness.
She stared at him in astonishment, and as she read something of the significant hieroglyphic of his battered face, her lips whitened. Her hand--it was thinner now than in the days of their prosperity, and her first finger was a little altered by the metal punching she did--clenched convulsively. "This horrible world!" she said, and said no more.
In these latter days they had become a very silent couple; they said scarcely a word to each other that night, but each followed a private train of thought. In the small hours, as Elizabeth lay awake, Denton started up beside her suddenly--he had been lying as still as a dead man.
"I cannot stand it!" cried Denton. "I _will_ not stand it!"
She saw him dimly, sitting up; saw his arm lunge as if in a furious blow at the enshrouding night. Then for a space he was still.
"It is too much--it is more than one can bear!"
She could say nothing. To her, also, it seemed that this was as far as one could go. She waited through a long stillness. She could see that Denton sat with his arms about his knees, his chin almost touching them.
"No," he said at last, "I'm going to stand it. That's the peculiar thing. There isn't a grain of suicide in us--not a grain. I suppose all the people with a turn that way have gone. We're going through with it--to the end."
Elizabeth thought grayly, and realised that this also was true.
"We're going through with it. To think of all who have gone through with it: all the generations--endless--endless. Little beasts that snapped and snarled, snapping and snarling, snapping and snarling, generation after generation."
His monotone, ended abruptly, resumed after a vast interval.
"There were ninety thousand years of stone age. A Denton somewhere in all those years. Apostolic succession. The grace of going through. Let me see! Ninety--nine hundred--three nines, twenty-seven--_three thousand_ generations of men!--men more or less. And each fought, and was bruised, and shamed, and somehow held his own--going through with it--passing it on.... And thousands more to come perhaps--thousands!