Deadlock by Dorothy M. Richardson — Read

With a parting glance at Mr. Shatov's talked-out indolent vacuity, she plunged, still waiting in the attitude of conversation, into a breathless silence. She would make no more talk. There should be silence between them. If he broke it, well and good; in future she would take measures to curtail the hours of conversation leading, now that she was at home in possession of the Russian life and point of view, only to one or other of his set of quoted opinions, beyond which he refused to move. If not, the quality of their silence would reveal to her what lay behind their unrelaxed capacity for association. The silence grew, making more and more space about her, and still he did not speak. It was dismantling; unendurable. With every moment they both grew smaller and smaller, moving quickly towards the quenching of all their interchange. But there was no doubt now. The question was there between them, for equal contemplation. His easy indolence had fled; his usual pallor heightened, and he sat regarding her with an unhesitating personal gaze. Her determination closed about him, blocking his way, filling the room. He must emerge, admit. He must at least see, as she saw, if it were only the extent of their dependence on each other. He knew his need. Perhaps she fulfilled it less than she thought? Perhaps it was hers alone.... His multiplied resources made hers humiliatingly greater. The shrine of her current consciousness stood before her; the roots of her only visible future planted forever within it. Losing it, she would be left with her burden of being once more scattered and unhoused.

He rose, bringing her to her feet, and stood before her ready to go or stay as she should choose, heaping up before her with an air of gently ironic challenge, the burden of responsibility; silently offering her one of his borrowed summaries, some irrelevant and philosophic worldly wisdom. But it was what he felt. There was something he feared. Alone, he would not have initiated this scene. She faltered, driven back and disarmed by the shock of an overwhelming pity... unexpected terrible challenge from within, known to no one, to be accepted or flouted on her sole eternal responsibility.... In a torture of acceptance she pressed through it and returned remorseless to her place, flooded as she moved by a sudden knowing of wealth within herself now being strangely quarried.