Inklings
[This novel is bookmarked on a page lined with markings; its reader seems to have underscored certain parts for emphasis] After all, there's no point in denying the undeniable, which, until that moment, I had obscured with the million minor tasks by which I measured my life. Yes, the polishing, the scrubbing, the pouring of wine and tea and deference into my master's cup - all of it had surrounded and obscured the essential truth of my life, like a phalanx now fallen. I had wasted my years, one by one, and now there were hardly any left to me at all.