Absalom, Absalom!

'Yes,' she said. 'Yes. I'm all right. Goodnight." — "Not thank you," he thought: "Just goodnight," outside the house now, breathing deep and fast now as he returned to the buggy, finding that he was about to begin to run, thinking quietly, "Jesus. Jesus. Jesus," breathing fast and hard of the dark dead furnace-breath of air, of night where the fierce aloof stars hung. His own home was dark; he was still using the whip when he turned into the lane and then into the stable lot. He sprang out and took the mare from the buggy, stripping the harness from her and tumbling it into the harness room without stopping to hang it up, sweating, breathing fast and hard; when he turned at last toward the house he did begin to run. He could not help it. He was twenty years old; he was not afraid, because what he had seen out there could not harm him, yet he ran; even inside the dark familiar house, his shoes in his hand, he still ran, up the stairs and into his room and began to undress, fast, sweating, breathing fast. "I ought to bathe," he thought: then he was lying on the bed, naked, swabbing his body steadily with the discarded shirt, sweating still, panting: so that when, his eye-muscles aching and straining into the darkness and the almost dried shirt still clutched in his hand, he said "I have been asleep" it was all the same, there was no difference: waking or sleeping he walked down that upper hall between the scaling walls and beneath the cracked ceiling, toward the faint light which fell outward from the last door and paused there, saying "No. No" and then "Only I must. I have to" and went in, entered the bare, stale room whose shutters were closed too, where a second lamp burned dimly on a crude table; waking or sleeping it was the same; the bed, the yellow sheets and pillow, the wasted yellow face with closed, almost transparent eyes on the pillow, the wasted hands, crossed on the breast as if he were already a corpse; waking or sleeping it was the same and would be the same forever as long as he lived: And you are — ? Henry Sutpen. And you have been here — ? Four years. And you came home — ? To die. Yes.

To die-? Yes. To die. And you have been here — ? Four years. And you are — ? Henry Sutpen.

It was quite cold in the room now; the chimes would ring for one any time now; the chill had a compounded, a gathered quality, as though preparing for the dead moment before dawn. 'And she waited three months before she went back to get him,' Shreve said. 'Why did she do that?" Quentin didn't answer. He lay still and rigid on his back with the cold New England night on his face and the blood running warm in his rigid body and limbs, breathing hard but slow, his eyes wide open upon the window, thinking "Nevermore of peace. Nevermore of peace.