Kate and Day and the billowing shape (p. 651)
‘ I understood the term hell as of that summer day and that night in the sophomore dormitory. I understood what people meant by hell. They did not mean the black sail. They meant the associated feelings.’ ‘Or the corner it came up out of, inside, if they mean a place.’ […] ‘From that day, whether I could articulate it satisfactorily or not,’ Day says, holding the knee of the leg just crossed, ‘I understood on an intuitive level why people killed themselves. If I had to go for any length of time with that feeling I’d surely kill myself.’ ‘Time in the shadow of the wing of the thing too big to see, rising.’ ‘Oh God please,’ Green says very distinctly. Day says: ‘There is no way it could feel worse.’
Context
The exchange's close, and the theme's suicide-logic stated two years before the It essay generalizes it: not a wish for death but the arithmetic of an unendurable feeling plus time. Kate's last antiphon — "Time in the shadow of the wing of the thing too big to see, rising" — is her own It essay in one line, and sleeping Green's "Oh God please" lands like accidental liturgy. (The stray space after Day's opening quote mark is as transcribed.)