Sanctuary

hair was a black sprawl, combed out now; her face, throat and arms

outside the covers were gray. After the others left the room. she lay for

a time, head and all beneath the covers. She lay so until she heard the

door shut and the descending feet, the doctor's light, unceasing voice

and Miss Reba's labored breath grow twilight-colored in the dingy hall

and die away. Then she sprang from the bed and ran to the door and shot

the bolt and ran back and hurled the covers over her head again, lying

in a tight knot until the air was exhausted.

A final saffron-colored light lay upon the ceiling and the upper walls,

tinged already with purple by the serrated palisade of Main Street high

against the western sky. She watched it fade as the successive yawns of

the shade consumed it. She watched the final light condense into the

clock face, and the dial change from a round orifice in the darkness to

a disc suspended in nothingness, the original chaos, and change in turn

to a crystal ball holding in its still and cryptic depths the ordered

chaos of the intricate and shadowy world upon whose scarred flanks the

old wounds whirl onward at dizzy speed into darkness lurking with new

disasters.

She was thinking about half-past-ten-o'clock. The hour for

86 WILLIAM FAULKNER

dressing for a dance, if you were popular enough not to have to be on

time. The air would be steamy with recent baths, and perhaps powder in the

light like chaff in barn-lofts, and they looking at one another,

comparing, talking whether you could do more damage if you could just walk

out on the floor like you were now. Some wouldn't, mostly ones with short

legs. Some of them were all right, but they just wouldn't. They wouldn't

say why. The worst one of all said boys thought all girls were ugly except

when they were dressed. She said the Snake had been seeing Eve for several

days and never noticed her until Adam made her put on a fig leaf. How do

you know? they said, and she said because the Snake was there before Adam,

because he was the first one thrown out of heaven; he was there all the

time. But that wasn't what they meant and they said, How do you know? and

Temple thought of her kind of backed up against the dressing table and the

rest of them in a circle around her with their combed hair and their

shoulders smelling of scented soap and the light powder in the air and

their eyes like knives until you could almost watch her flesh where the

eyes were touching it, and her eyes in her ugly face courageous and

frightened and daring, and they all saying, How do you know? until she

told them and held up her hand and swore she had. That was when the

youngest one turned and ran out of the room. She locked herself in the

bath and they could hear her being sick.

She thought about half-past-ten-o'clock in the morning. Sunday morning,

and the couples strolling toward church. She remembered it was still

Sunday, the same Sunday, looking at the fading peaceful gesture of the

clock. Maybe it was halfpast-ten this morning, that

half-past-ten-o'clock. Then I'm not here, she thought. This is not me.

Then I'm at school. I have a date tonight with . . . thinking of the

student with whom she had th6 date. But she couldn't remember who it

would be. She kept the dates written down in her Latin 'pony,' so she

didn't have to bother about who it was. She'd just dress, and after a

while somebody would call for her. So I better get up and dress, she

said, looking at the clock.

She rose and crossed the room quietly, She watched the clock face, but

although she could see a warped turmoil of faint light and shadow of

geometric miniature swinging across it, she could not see herself. It's

this nightie, she thought, looking at her arms, her breast rising out of

a dissolving pall beneath which her toes peeped in pale, fleet intervals

as she walked. She drew the bolt quietly and returned to the bed and lay

with her head cradled in her arms.

There was still a little light in the room. She found that she was

hearing her watch; had been hearing it for some time.

SANCTUARY 87

She discovered that the house was full of noises, seeping into the room

muffled and indistinguishable, as though from a distance. A bell rang

faintly and shrilly somewhere; someone mounted the stairs in a swishing

garment. The feet went on past the door and mounted another stair and

ceased. She listened to the watch. A car started beneath the window with a

grind of gears; again the faint bell rang, shrill and prolonged. She found

that the faint light yet in the room was from a street lamp. Then she

realised that it was night and the darkness beyond was full of the sound of

the city.

She heard the two dogs come up the stairs in a furious scrabble. The noise

passed the door and stopped, became utterly still; so still that she could

almost see them crouching there in the dark against the wall, watching the

stairs. One of them was named Mister something, Temple thought, waiting to

hear Miss Reba's feet on the stairs. But it was not Miss Reba; they came