““She was using the water as she had used the fruit earlier—to calm herself, to assure herself of the possibility of normality. Yet all the time she was thinking: I’m right off balance. I feel as if the atmosphere of this flat were being poisoned, as if a spirit of perverse and ugly spite were everywhere. Yet it’s nonsense. The truth is, everything I’m thinking at the moment is wrong. I can feel it is…and yet I’m saving myself by this sort of thinking. Saving myself from what? She felt ill again, and frightened, as she had on the tube. She thought: I’ve got to stop it, I simply must—though she could not have said what she had to stop. I’ll go next door, she decided, and sit down, and—she did not finish the thought, but she had a mental image of a dry well, slowly filling up with water. Yes; that’s what’s wrong with me—I’m dry. I’m empty.””
