OCR Text |
Show -120- kind of promise that the Spirit of Life would continue to exist? not the individual spirit. Death? for the ancient Greeks; he thought, must have been a constant? horrifying fact of life? Were we any better off today? Modern society? on the whole? seemed almost in a generation to have lost its faith in individual salvation? How was it for his sister-in-law1? seeing her family assemble about her sickbed? Or did Nature so dull the senses that one could actually yearn for annihilation;? sink into death as one would immerse oneself into the warm x«ater of a bath? The last time he had seen hiss wife's sister? she had not seemed to be ill, but only wasting away, seemed to be turning into a little old lady before his eyes; whereas, before she had always seemed to him the finest example of warm liveliness? She had been sent to live with them once when she was just out of high school and they were in the Midwest, and her lively enthusiasm had warmed:their household? She had come again later to stay with them? near the end of the war, when her husband had been shipped overseas? no longer a bright young student but a mature woman. There had been one moment during those months xihen her presence even presented a threat'? The Professor? then within months of completing his studies for the Ph.D., had found e himself standing behind her one day? alon$ in their living room; and an almost uncontrollable urge, lust? whatever it |