THE TERRACE
663
turn
r
into
I,
and
s
into
tho
I speak in a very confused way,
doctor."
Arner declared that this made her pronunciation graceful
and childlike. She thanked him with her look and the attorney
continued:
"I don't really believe you're
ill.
Of course I cannot speak
as a physician but as a big brother. What happens to you during
the lunar days is more natural then the tranquility of women we
call normal. I'm serious. Your reactions are in response to a
logic far above the common and ordinary."
He spoke glancing toward the director in the distance who
still had his fish in his beak. But Matilda was in his arms and
he was thinking: "This woman bewilders me. I say these things
by chance, but at bottom they contain some truth. Nature is
not likely to make mistakes. Men are mistaken. Matilda has no
children. Nevertheless she is a woman who was born only to
have them. She was meant to be impregnated in early adoles–
cence. Nature gave her that body, that neat and appealing
warmth of her lips, that quiet promise in her eyes. None of her
ovules, none of her possibilities of becoming pregnant, should
have been lost." And Arner wondered what could have happen–
ed with Bob, her second husband, in other words, what truth
there could be to the story of the poisoning. For they said that
she had tried to poison him. She looked Arner in the eyes, wait–
ing for him to go on talking:
"Your nervous disorder," he began again, "is a natural
manifestation of the order of nature. I mean, Mrs. Strolheim,
that an ovule that
is
lost can represent in a certain way the blast–
ed hope of this humanity to which we belong, and maybe of
the planet itself on which we live. It sounds light and trivial, but
it can be grave. Really, Mrs. Strolheim, it can be tremendous."
She was listening with a serenity that had a double mean–
ing. Amer started to repeat his words, but she interrupted:
"I understand. And if this is true, what does nature want of
