Explore "Riceyman Steps" by Arnold Bennett on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Elsie it always was who every morning breathed the breath of life into the dead nocturnal house, and revived it, and turned it once again from a dark, unresponsive, meaningless and deathlike keep into a human habitation. The dawn helped, but Elsie was the chief agent.
On this morning, which was a Monday, she arose much earlier than in the rest of the week, and even before the dawn. She arose with her sorrow, which left her only when she slept and which was patiently and ruthlessly waiting for her when she awoke. Few people save certain bodily sufferers and certain victims of frustration know the infernal, everlasting perseverance of which pain, physical or mental, is capable. Nevertheless, Elsie's sorrow was lightening by hope. Nearly a year had passed since Joe's departure, and she had invented a purely superstitious idea, almost a creed, that he would reappear on the anniversary of his vanishing. This idea was built on nothing whatever; and although it shot her sorrow through with radiance it also terrified her -- lest it should prove false. If it proved false her sorrow would close her in like the black grave.