When she came to herself she was in the Strand. She walked on a little and turned aside to look at a jeweller’s window and consider being in the Strand at night. Most of the shops were still open. The traffic was still in full tide. The jeweller’s window repelled her. It was very yellow with gold, all the objects close together and each one bearing a tiny label with the price. There was a sort of commonness about the Strand, not like the cheerful commonness of Oxford Street, more like the City with its many sudden restaurants. She walked on. But there were theatres also, linking it up with the west-end and streets leading off it where people like Bob Greville had chambers. It was the tailing off of the west-end and the beginning of a deep dark richness that began about Holywell. Mysterious important churches crowded in amongst little brown lanes ... the little dark brown lane.... She wondered what she had been thinking since she left Wimpole Street and whether she had come across Trafalgar Square without seeing it or round by some other way. They were fighting; sending out suffocation and misery into the surrounding air ... she stopped close to the two upright balanced threatening bodies, almost touching them. The men looked at her. “Don’t” she said imploringly and hurried on trembling.... It occurred to her that she had not seen fighting since a day in her childhood when she had wondered at the swaying bodies and sickened at the thud of a fist against a cheek. The feeling was the same to-day, the longing to explain somehow to the men that they could not fight.... Half-past seven. Perhaps there would not be an A.B.C. so far down. It would be impossible to get a meal. Perhaps the girls would have some coffee. An A.B.C. appeared suddenly at her side, its panes misty in the cold air. She went confidently in. It seemed nearly full of men. Never mind, city men; with a wisdom of their own which kept them going and did not affect anything, all alike and thinking the same thoughts; far away from anything she thought or knew. She walked confidently down the centre, her plaid-lined golf-cape thrown back her small brown boat-shaped felt hat suddenly hot on her head in the warmth. The shop turned at a right angle showing a large open fire with a fireguard, and a cat sitting on the hearthrug in front of it. She chose a chair at a small table in front of the fire. The velvet settees at the sides of the room were more comfortable. But it was for such a little while to-night and it was not one of her own A.B.Cs. She felt as she sat down as if she were the guest of the city men and ate her boiled egg and roll and butter and drank her small coffee in that spirit-gazing into the fire and thinking her own thoughts unresentful of the uncongenial scraps of talk that now and again penetrated her thoughts; the complacent laughter of the men amazed her; their amazing unconsciousness of the things that were written all over them.

The fire blazed into her face. She dropped her cape over the back of her chair and sat in the glow; the small pat of butter was not enough for the large roll. Pictures came out of the fire, the strange moment in her room, the smashing of the plaque, the lamplit den; Mr. Orly’s song, the strange rich difficult day and now her untouched self here, free, unseen and strong, the strong world of London all round her, strong free untouched people, in a dark lit wilderness happy and miserable in their own way, going about the streets looking at nothing, thinking about no special person or thing, as long as they were there, being in London. Even the business people who went about intent, going to definite places were in the secret of London and looked free. The expression of the collar and hair of many of them said they had homes. But they got away from them. No one who had never been alone in London was quite alive.... I’m free—I’ve got free—nothing can ever alter that she thought, gazing wide-eyed into the fire, between fear and joy. The strange familiar pang gave the place a sort of consecration. A strength was piling up within her. She would go out unregretfully at closing time and up through wonderful unknown streets, not her own streets till she found Holborn and then up and round through the Squares.

2

On the hall table lay a letter ... from Alma; under the shadow of the bronze soldier leaning on his gun. Miriam gathered it up swiftly. No one knew her here ... no past and no future ... coming in and out unknown, in the present secret wonder. Pausing for a moment near the smeary dimly-lit marble slab the letter out of sight she held this consciousness. There was no sound in the house ... its huge high thick walls held all the lodgers secure and apart, fixed in richly enclosed rooms in the heart of London; secure from all the world that was not London, flying through space, swinging along on a planet spread with continents—Londoners. Alma’s handwriting, the same as it had been at school only a little larger and firmer, broke into that. Of course Alma had answered the postcard ... it had been an impulse, a cry of triumph after years of groping about. But it was like pulling a string. Silly. And now this had happened. But it was only a touch, only a finger laid on the secret hall table that no one had seen. The letter need not be answered. Out of sight it seemed to have gone away ... destroyed unopened it would be as if it had never come and everything would be as before.... Enough, more than enough without writing to Alma. An evening paper boy was shouting raucously in the distance. The letter-box brought his voice into the hall as he passed the door. Miriam moved on up the many flights.

3

Upstairs she found herself eagerly tearing open the letter.... “I’ve just heard from an old schoolfellow” she heard herself saying to the girls in Kennett Street. There was something exciting in the letter ... at the end Alma Wilson (officially Mrs. G. Wilson) ... strange people in the room ... Alma amongst them; looking out from amongst dreadfulness. Married. She had gone in amongst the crowd already—forever. How clever of her ... deceitful ... that little spark of Alma in her must have been deceitful ... sly, at some moment. Alma’s eyes glanced at her with a new more preoccupied and covered look ... she used to go sometimes to theatres with large parties of people with money and the usual dresses who never thought anything about anything ... perhaps that was part of the reason, perhaps Alma was more that than she had thought ... marrying in the sort of way she went to theatre-parties—clever. The letter was full of excitement ... Alma leaping up from her marriage and clutching at her ... not really married; dancing to some tune in some usual way like all those women and jumping up in a way that fizzled and could not be kept up....

“You dear old thing! ... fell out of the sky this morning ... to fill pages with ‘you dear old thing!’ ... see you at once! Immediately! ... come up to town and meet you ... some sequestered tea-shop ... our ancient heads together ... tell you all that has happened to me since those days ... next Thursday ... let you know how really really rejoiced I am ... break the very elderly fact that I am married ... but that makes no difference....” That would not be so bad—seeing Alma alone in a tea shop in the west end; in a part of the new life, that would be all right; nothing need happen, nothing would be touched, “all I have had the temerity to do ...” what did that mean?

4

Unpinning the buckram-stiffened black velvet band from her neck, she felt again with a rush of joy that her day was beginning and moved eagerly about amongst the strange angles and shadows of her room, the rich day all about her. Somebody had put up her little varnished oak bookshelf just in the right place, the lower shelf in a line with the little mantelpiece. When the gas bracket was swung out from the wall the naked flame shone on the backs of the indiscriminately arranged books ... the calf-bound Shakespeare could be read now comfortably in the immense fresh dark night under the gas flame; the Perne’s memorial edition of Tennyson.... She washed her face and hands in hard cold water at the little rickety washstand, yellow-grained rich beloved, drying them on the thin holey face towel hurriedly. Lying neatly folded amongst the confusion of oddments in a top drawer was her lace tie. Holding it out to its full length she spread it against her neck, crossed the ends at the back bringing them back round her neck to spread in a narrow flat plastron to her waist, kept in place by a brooch at the top and a pin fastened invisibly half way down. Her face shone fresh and young above the creamy lace ... the tie was still fairly new and crisp ... when it had to be washed it would be limp ... but it would go on some time just for evenings transforming her harsh black John Doble half guinea costume into evening dress. For some moments she contemplated its pleasant continuous pattern and the way the rounded patterned ends fell just below the belt....

5

The top-floor bell would not ring. After some hesitation Miriam rang the house bell. The door was opened by a woman in a silk petticoat and a dressing jacket. Miriam gazed dumbly into large clear blue eyes gazing at her from a large clean clear fresh face feathered with little soft natural curls, cut out sharply against the dark passage.

“Are you for the top?” enquired the woman in a smooth serene sleepy voice.

“Yes” announced Miriam eagerly coming in and closing the door, her ears straining to catch the placid words spoken by the woman as she disappeared softly into a softly-lit room. She went tremulously up the dark stairs into a thick stale odour of rancid fried grease and on towards a light that glimmered from the topmost short flight of steep uncarpeted winding stairs. “They’re in” said her thoughts with a quick warm leap. “Hullo” she asserted, ascending the stairs.

“Hullo” came in response a quick challenging voice ... a soft clear reed-like happy ring that Miriam felt to her knees while her happy feet stumbled on.

“Is that the Henderson?”

“It’s me” said Miriam emerging on a tiny landing and going through the open door of a low-ceiled lamplit room. “It’s me it’s me” she repeated from the middle of the floor. An eager face was turned towards her from a thicket of soft dull wavy hair. She gazed vaguely. The small slippered feet planted firmly high up against the lintel the sweep of the red dressing-gown, the black patch of the Mudie book with its yellow label, the small ringed hand upon it, the outflung arm and hand the little wreath of smoke about the end of the freshly lit cigarette, the cup of coffee on the little table under the lamp, the dim shapes about the room lit by the flickering blaze....

Miriam smiled into the smiling steel blue of the eyes turned towards her and waited smiling for the silver reed of tone to break again. “I’m so glad you’ve come. I wanted you. Sit down and shut the door my child.... I don’t mind which you do first, but—do—them—both,” she tinkled, stretching luxuriously and bringing her feet to the ground with a swing. Miriam closed the door. “Can I take off my things?”

“Of course child ... take them all off; you know I admire you most draped in a towel.”

“I’ve got such awful feet” said Miriam hugging the compliment as she dropped her things in a distant arm-chair.

“It’s not your feet, it’s your extraordinary shoes.”

“M.”

“How beautiful you look. You put on ties better than anyone I know. I wish I could wear things draped round my neck.”

Miriam sat down in the opposite wicker chair.

“Isn’t it cold—my feet are freezing; it’s raining.”

“Take off your shoes.”

Miriam got off her shoes and propped them in the fender to dry.

“What is that book?”

“Eden Philpotts’s ‘Children of the Mist’” fluted the voice reverently. “Read it?”

“No” said Miriam expectantly.

The eager face turned to an eager profile with eyes brooding into the fire. “He’s so wonderful” mused the voice and Miriam watched eagerly. Mag read books—for their own sake; and could judge them and compare them with other books by the same author ... but all this wonderful knowledge made her seem wistful; knowing all about books and plays and strangely wistful and regretful; the things that made her eyes blaze and made her talk reverently or in indignant defence always seemed sad in the end ... wistful hero worship ... raving about certain writers and actors as if she did not know they were people.

“He’s so wonderful” went on the voice with its perpetual modulations “he gets all the atmosphere of the west country—perfectly. You live there while you’re reading him.”

With a little chill sense of Mag in this wonderful room alone, living in the west country and herself coming in as an interruption, Miriam noted the name of the novelist in her mind ... there was something about it, she knew she would not forget it; soft and numb with a slight clatter and hiss at the end, a rain-storm, the atmosphere of Devonshire and the mill-wheel.

“Devonshire people are all consumptive,” she said decisively.

“Are they?”

“Yes, it’s the mild damp air. They have lovely complexions; like the Irish. There must be any amount of consumption in Ireland.”

“I suppose there is.”

Miriam sat silent and still watching Mag’s movements as she sipped and puffed, so strangely easy and so strangely wistful in her wonderful rich Bloomsbury life—and waiting for her next remark.

“You look very happy tonight child; what have you been doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You look as happy as a bird.”

“Are birds happy?”

“Of course birds are happy.”

“Well—they prey on each other—and they’re often frightened.”

“How wise we are.”

Brisk steps sounded on the little stairs.

“Tell me what you have been doing.”

“Oh. I don’t know. Weird things have been happening.... Oh, weird things.”

“Tell your aunt at once.” Mag gathered herself together as the brisk footsteps came into the room. “Hoh” said a strong resonant voice “it’s the Henderson. I thought as much.”

“Yes. Doesn’t she look pretty?”

“Yes—she has a beautiful lace tie.”

“I wish I could wear things like that round my neck, don’t you von Bohlen?” “I do. She can stick anything round her neck—and look nice.”

“Anything; a garter or a—a kipper....”

“Don’t be so cracked.”

“She says weird things have been happening to her. I say I didn’t make any coffee for you and the spirit lamp wants filling.”

“Damn you—Schweinhund—verfluchte Schweinhund.”

Miriam had been gazing at the strong square figure in the short round fur-lined cloak and sweeping velvet hat, the firm decisive movements and imagining the delicate pointed high-heeled shoes. Presently those things would be off and the door closed on the three of them.

“There’s some Bass.”

“I’m going to have some suppe. Have some suppe, Henderson.”

“Non, merci.”

“She’s proud. Bring her some. What did you have for supper, child?”

“Oh, we had an enormous lunch. They’d had a dinner-party.”

“What did you have for supper?”

“Oh lots of things.”

“Bring her some suppe. I’m not sure I won’t have a basin myself.”

“All right. I’ll put some on.” The brisk steps went off and a voice hummed in and out of the other rooms.

Watching Mag stirring the fire, giving a last pull at her cigarette end and pushing back the hair from her face ... silent and old and ravaged, and young and animated and powerful, Miriam blushed and beamed silently at her reiterated demands for an account of herself.

“I say I saw an extraordinary woman downstairs.”

Mag turned sharply and put down the poker.

“Yes?”

“In a petticoat.”

“Frederika Elizabeth! She’s seen the Pierson!” “Hoh! Has she?” The brisk footsteps approached and the door was closed. The dimly shining mysteries of the room moved about Miriam, the outside darkness flowing up to the windows moved away as the tall dressing-gowned figure lowered the thin drab loosely rattling Venetian blinds; the light seemed to go up and distant objects became more visible; the crowded bookshelf the dark littered table under it, the empty table pushed against the wall near the window—the bamboo bookshelf between the windows above a square mystery draped to the ground with a table cover—the little sofa behind Mag’s chair, the little pictures, cattle gazing out across a bridge of snow, cattish complacent sweepy women. Albert...? Moore? the framed photographs of Dickens and Irving, the litter on the serge draped mantelpiece in front of the mirror of the bamboo overmantel, silver candlesticks, photographs of German women and Canon Wilberforce ... all the riches of comfortable life.

“You are late.”

“Yes I am fear-fully late.”

“Why are you late Frederika Elizabeth von Bohlen?”

The powerful rounded square figure was in the leather armchair opposite the blaze, strongly moulded brown knickered black stockinged legs comfortably crossed stuck firmly out between the heavy soft folds of a grey flannel dressing gown. The shoes had gone, grey woollen bedroom slippers blurred all but the shapely small ankles. Mag was lighting another cigarette, von Bohlen was not doing needlework, the room settled suddenly to its best rich exciting blur.

“Tonight I must smoke or die.”

“Must you, my dear.”

“Why.”

“To-nate,—a, ay must smoke—a, or daye.”

“Es ist bestimmt, in Gottes Rath.”

“Tell us what you think of the Pierson, child.”

“She was awfully nice. Is it your landlady?” “Yes—isn’t she nice? We think she’s extraordinary—all things considered. You know we hadn’t the least idea what she was when we came here.”

“What is she?”

“Well—er—you embarrass me, child, how shall we put it to her, Jan?”

“D’you mean to say she’s improper?”

“Yes—she’s improper. We hadn’t the faintest notion of it when we came.”

“How extraordinary.”

“It is extraordinary. We’re living in an improper house—the whole street’s improper we’re discovering.”

“How absolutely awful.”

“Now we know why Mother Cosway hinted when we left her to come here that we wanted to be free for devil’s mirth.”

“How did you find out?”

“Henriette told us; you see she works for the Pierson.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Well—she told us.”

“Six”—laughed Mag, quoting towards Jan.

“Six,” trumpeted Jan “and if not six, seven.”

They both laughed.

“In one evening,” trumpeted Jan.

“I say are you going to leave?” The thought of the improper street was terrible and horrible; but they might go right away to some other part of London. Mag answered instantly but the interval had seemed long and Miriam was cold with anxiety.

“No; we don’t see why we should.”

Miriam gazed dumbly from one to the other, finding herself admiring and wondering more than ever at their independence and strength.

“You see the woman’s so absolutely self-respecting.”

“Much more so than we are!”

“Out of doors she’s a model of decorum and good style.”

“We’re ashamed when we meet her.” “We are. We skip into the gutter.”

“We babble and slink!”

“Indoors she’s a perfect landlady. She’s been awfully good to us.”

“A perfect brick!”

“She doesn’t drink; she’s most exquisitely clean. There’s nothing whatever to—to indicate the er—nature of her profession.”

“Except that she sits at the window.”

“But she does not tire her hair and look forth.”

“Or fifth.”

“Fool.”

Miriam giggled.

“Really Miriam she is rather wonderful you know. We like her.”

“Henriette is devoted to her.”

“And so apparently is her husband.”

“Her husband?”

“Yes—she has a husband—he appears at rare intervals—and a little girl at boarding school. She goes to see her but the child never comes here. She tells us quite frankly that she wants to keep her out of harm’s way.”

“How amazing!”

“Yes, she’s extraordinary. She’s Eurasian. She was born in India.”

“That accounts for a good deal. Eurasians are awful; they’ve got all the faults of both sides.”

“East is East and West is West and never the two shall meet.”

“Well, we like her.”

“So we have decided to ignore her little peccadilloes.”

“I don’t see that it’s our business. Frankly I can’t see that it has anything whatever to do with us. Do you?”

“Well I don’t know; I don’t suppose it has really.”

“What would you do in our place?”

“I don’t know ... I don’t believe I should have found out.” “I don’t believe you would; but if you had?”

“I think I should have been awfully scared.”

“You would have been afraid that the sixth.”

“Or the seventh.”

“Might have wandered upstairs.”

“No; I mean the whole idea.”

“Oh; the idea....”

“London, my dear Miriam, is full of ideas.”

“I will go and get the suppe.”

Jan rose; her bright head and grey shoulders went up above the lamplight, darkening to steady massive outlines, strongly moving as she padded and fluttered briskly out of the room.

The rich blur of the room free of the troubling talk and the swift conversational movements of the two, lifted and was touched with a faint grey, a suggestion of dawn or twilight, as if coming from the hidden windows. Mag sat motionless in her chair, gazing into the fire.

“... Wise and happy infant, I want to ask your opinion.”

Miriam roused herself and glanced steadily across. The outlines of things grew sharp. She could imagine the room in daylight and felt a faint sharp sinking; hungry.

“I’m going to state you a case. I think you have an extraordinarily sharp sense of right and wrong.”

“Oh no.”

“You have an extraordinarily sharp sense of right and wrong. Imagine a woman. Can you imagine a woman?”

“Go on.”

“Imagine a woman engaged to a man. Imagine her allowing—another man—to kiss her.”

Miriam sat thinking. She imagined the two, the snatched caress, the other man alone and unconscious.

“Would you call that treachery to the other person?”

“It would depend upon which she liked best.”

“That’s just the difficulty.”

“Oh. That’s awful.” “Don’t you think a kiss, just a kiss—might be,—well—neither here nor there.”

“Well, if it’s nothing, there’s nothing in the whole thing. If there is anything—you can’t talk about just kisses.”

“Dreadful Miriam.”

“Do you believe in blunted sensibilities?” How funny that Mag should have led up to that new phrase ... but this was a case.

“You mean——”

“Whether if a sensibility is blunted it can ever grow sharp again.”

“No. I suppose that’s it. How can it?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. It’s a perfectly awful idea, I think.”

“It is awful—because we are all blunting our sensibilities all the time—are we not?”

“That’s just it—whether we ought.”

“Does one always know?”

“Don’t you think so? There’s a feeling. Yes I think one always knows.”

“Suppe, children.”

Miriam took her bowl with eager embarrassment ... the sugar-basin, the pudding basin and the slop bowl together on a tray, the quickly produced soup—the wonderful rich life the girls lived in their glowing rooms—each room with a different glow.... Jan’s narrow green clean room with its suite and hair brushes and cosmetics and pictures of Christ, Mag’s crowded shadowy little square, its litter and its many photographs, their eiderdowns and baths and hot water bottles; the kitchen alive with eyes and foreheads—musicians, artists philosophers pasted on the walls ... why? Why?... Jan with wonderful easy knowledge of the world’s great people ... and strange curious intimate liking for them ... the sad separate effect of all those engraved faces ... the perfectly beautiful blur they made all together in patches on the walls ... the sitting room, Mag, nearly all Mag, except the photographs on the mantelpiece ... the whole rooms from the top of the stairs ... her thoughts folded down; they were not going away; not; that was certain.

“I say I can’t go on for ever eating your soup.”

“Drink it then for a change my child.”

“No but really.”

“This is special soup; there is a charge; one guinea a basin.”

“Use of room two guineas.”

“Intellectual conversation——”

“One and eleven three.”

Miriam flung out delighted admiring glances and laughed unrestrainedly. Mag’s look saying “it does not take much to keep the child amused” took nothing from her mirthful joy. Their wit, or was it humour?—always brought the same happy shock ... they were so funny; there was a secret in it.

“It’s awfully good soup.”

“Desiccated——”

“A penny a packet.”

“Thickened with pea flour.”

“Twopence a packet.”

6

“Was she your favourite schoolfellow?”

Miriam’s jarred mind worked eagerly. The girls thought this was a revival of some great school friendship ... they would not be in the least jealous; they were curious and interested, but they must understand ... they must realise that Alma was wonderful ... something to be proud of ... in the strange difficult scientific way; something they knew hardly anything about. Mag almost not at all and Jan only in a general way in her neat wide education; but not in Alma’s way of being rigid and reverent and personally interested about, so that every other way of looking at things made her angry. But they must understand, they must in some quite certain way be quickly made to understand at the same time that she was outside ... an extra ... a curious bright distant resource, nothing whatever to do with the wonderful present ... the London life was sacred and secret, away from everything else in the world. It would disappear if one had ties outside ... anything besides the things of holidays and week-ends that they all three had and brought back from outside to talk about. It would be easy and exciting to meet Alma if that were clear, and to come back and tell the girls about it.

“I don’t think so.”

They both looked up, stirring in their quick way, and waited.

Miriam moved her head uneasily. It was painful. They were using a sort of language ... that was the trouble ... your favourite flower ... your favourite colour ... it was just the sort of pain that came in trying to fill up confession albums. This bit of conversation would be at an end presently. Her anger would shut it up, and they would put it away without understanding and Mag would go on to something else.

“No—I don’t think she was. She was very small and pretty—petite. She had the most wonderful limpid eyes.”

Mag was sitting forward with her elbows on her knees and her little hands sticking out into the air. A comfortable tinkling chuckle shook her shoulders. Miriam tugged and wrenched.

“I don’t think she cared for me, really ... she was an only child.”

Mag’s chuckle pealed up into a little festoon of clear laughter.

“She doesn’t care for you because—she’s—an—only—child” she shook out.

“One of the sheltered ones.” Jan returned to her chiffon pleats. She was making conversation. She did not care how much or how little Alma mattered.

“She’s sheltered now anyhow—she’s married.” “Oh—she’s married....”

“She’s married is she?”

Polite tones ... they were not a bit surprised ... both faces looked calm and abstracted. The room was dark and clear in the cold entanglement. It must be got over now, as if she had not mentioned Alma. She felt for her packet of cigarettes with an uneasy face, watching Mag’s firm movements as she rearranged herself and her dressing gown in her chair.

“How old is she?”

“About my age.”

“Oh—about nine; that’s early to begin the sheltered life.”

“You can’t begin the sheltered life too early; if you are going to begin it at all.”

“Why begin it at all, Jan?”

“Well my dear little Miriam I think there is a good deal to be said for the sheltered life.”

“Yes——” Mag settled more deeply into her chair, burrowing with her shoulders and crossing her knees with a fling—“and if you don’t begin it jolly early it’s too late to begin it at all....”

Then Mag meant to stay always as she was ... oh, good, good ... with several people interested in her ... what a curious worry her engagement must be ... irrelevant ... and with her ideas of loyalty. “Don’t you think soh?” Irritating—why did she do it—what was it—not a provincialism—some kind of affectation as if she were on the stage. It sounded brisk and important—soh—as if her thoughts had gone on and she was making conversation with her lips. Why not let them and drop it ... there was something waiting, always something waiting just outside the nag of conversation.

“I can’t imagine anything more awful than what you call the sheltered life” said Miriam with a little pain in her forehead. Perhaps they would laugh and that would finish it and something would begin. “For us yes. Imagine either of us coming down to it in the morning; the regular breakfast table, the steaming coffee, the dashes of rishers ... dishers of rashes I mean, the eggs....”

“You are alluding I presume to the beggs and acon.”

“Precisely. We should die.”

“Of boredom.”

“Imagine not being able to turn up on Sunday morning in your knickers with your hair down.”

“I love Sundays. That first cigarette over the Referee.”

“Is like nothing on earth.”

“Or in heaven.”

“Well, or in heaven.”

“The first cigarette anyhow, with or without the Referee. It’s just pure absolute bliss that first bit of Sunday morning; complete well-being and happiness.”

“While the sheltered people are flushed with breakfast table-talk——”

“Or awkward silences.”

“The deep damned silence of disillusionment.”

“And thinking about getting ready for church.”

“The men smoke.”

“Stealthily and sleepily in armchairs like cats—ever seen a cat smoke?—like cats—with the wife or somebody they are tired of talking to on the doormat—as it were—tentatively, I speak tentatively ... in a dead-alley—Dedale—Dedalus—coming into the room any minute in Sunday clothes——”

“To stand on the hearthrug.”

“No hanging about the room. If there’s any hearthrug standing it’s the men who do it, smoking blissfully alone, and trying to look weary and wise and important if anyone comes in.”

“Like Cabinet ministers?”

“Yes; when they are really—er.”

“Cabinets.”

“Footstools; office stools; you never saw a sheltered woman venture on to the hearthrug except for a second if she’s short-sighted to look at the clock.” Miriam sprang to the hearthrug and waved her cigarette. “Con-fu-sion to the sheltered life!” The vast open of London swung, welcoming, before her eyes.

“Hoch! Hoch!”

“Banzai!”

“We certainly have our compensations.”

“Com-pen-sa-tions?”

“Well—for all the things we have to give up.”

“What things?”

“The things that belong to us. To our youth. Tennis, dancing—er irresponsibility in general....”

“I’ve never once thought about any of those things; never once since I came to town” said Miriam grappling with little anxious pangs that assailed her suddenly; dimly seeing the light on garden trees, hearing distant shouts, the sound of rowlocks, the lapping of water against smoothing swinging sculls. But all that life meant people, daily association with sheltered women and complacent abominable men, there half the time and half the time away on their own affairs which gave them a sort of mean advantage, and money. There was nothing really to regret. It was different for Mag. She did not mind ordinary women. Did not know the difference; or men.

“Yes but anyhow. If we were in the sheltered life we should either have done with that sort of thing and be married—or still keeping it up and anxious about not being married. Besides anyhow; think of the awful people.”

“Intolerant child.”

“Isn’t she intolerant. What a good thing you met us.”

“Yes of course; but I’m not intolerant. And look here. Heaps of those women envy us. They envy us our freedom. What we’re having is wanderyahre; the next best thing to wanderyahre.”

“Women don’t want wanderyahre.”

“I do, Jan.” “So do I. I think the child’s quite right there. Freedom is life. We may be slaves all day and guttersnipes all the rest of the time but ach Gott, we are free.”

7

“What a perfectly extraordinary idea.”

“I know. But I don’t see how you can get away from it” mused Miriam, dreamily holding out against Jan’s absorbed sewing and avoiding for a moment Mag’s incredulously speculative eyes; “if it’s true,” she went on, the rich blur of the warm room becoming as she sent out her voice evenly, thinking eagerly on, a cool clear even daylight, “that everything that can possibly happen does happen, then there must be somewhere in the world, every possible kind of variation of us and this room.”

“D’you mean to say” gurgled Mag with a fling of her knickered leg and an argumentative movement of the hand that hung loosely dangling a cigarette over the fireside arm of the chair, “that there are millions of rooms exactly like this each with one thing different—say the stem of one narcissus broken instead of whole for instance.”

“My dear Miriam, infinitude couldn’t hold them.”

“Infinitude can hold anything—of course I can see the impossibility of a single world holding all the possible variations of everything at once—but what I mean is that I can think it and there must be something corresponding to it in life—anything that the mind can conceive is realised, somehow, all possibilities must come about, that’s what I mean I think.”

“You mean you can see, as it were in space, millions of little rooms—a little different” choked Mag.

“Yes I can—quite distinctly—solid—no end to them.”

“I think it’s a perfectly horrible idea” stated Jan complacently.

“It isn’t—I love it and it’s true ... you go on and on and on, filling space.”

“Then space is solid.” “It is solid. People who talk of empty space don’t think ... space is more solid than a wall ... yes ... more solid than a diamond—girls, I’m sure.”

“Space is full of glorious stars....”

“Yes; I know but that’s such a tiny bit of it....”

“Millions and trillions of miles.”

“Those are only words. Everything is words.”

“Well you must use words.”

“You ought not to think in words. I mean—you can think in your brain by imagining yourself going on and on through it, endless space.”

“You can’t grasp space with your mind.”

“You don’t grasp it. You go through it.”

“I see what you mean. To me it is a fearful idea. Like eternal punishment.”

“There’s no such thing as eternal punishment. The idea is too silly. It makes God a failure and a fool. It’s a man’s idea. The men who take the hearthrug. Sitting on a throne judging everybody and passing sentence is a thing a man would do.”

“But humanity is wicked.”

“Then God is. You can’t separate God and humanity and that includes women who don’t really believe any of those things.”

“But. Look at the churches. Look at women and the parsons.”

“Women like ritual and things and they like parsons, some parsons, because they are like women, penetrable to light, as Wilberforce said the other day, and understand women better than most men do.”

“Miriam, are you a pantheist?”

“Nearer is he than breathing, closer than hands and feet. It doesn’t matter what you call it.” “If you don’t accept eternal punishment there can’t be eternal happiness.”

“Oh punishment, happiness; tweedledum, tweedledee.”

“Well—look here, there’s remorse. That’s deathless. It must be. If you feel remorseful about anything the feeling must last as long as you remember the thing.”

“Remorse is real enough. I know what you mean. But it may be short-sightedness. Not seeing all round a thing. Is that Tomlinson? Or it may be cleansing you. If it were complete Mag it would kill you outright. I can believe that. I can believe in annihilation. I am prepared for it. I can’t think why it doesn’t happen to me. That’s just it.”

“I should like to be annihilated.”

“Shut up von Bohlen; you wouldn’t. But look here Miriam child, do you mean to say you think that as long as there is something that keeps on and on, fighting its way on in spite of everything one has, well, a right to exist?”

“Well, that may be the survival of the fittest which doesn’t mean the ethically fittest as Huxley had to admit. We kill the ethically fittest at present. We killed Christ. They go to Heaven. All of us who survive have things to learn down here in hell. Perhaps this is hell. There seems something, ahead.”

“Ourselves. Rising on the ashes of our dead selves. Lord, it’s midnight——”

The chill of the outside night, solitude and her cold empty room....

“I’m going to bed.”

“So am I. We shall be in bed, Miriam, five minutes after you have gone.”

Jan went off for the hot water bottles.

“All right, I’m going——” Miriam bent for her shoes. The soles were dry, scorching; they scorched her feet as she forced on the shoes; one sole cracked across as she put her foot to the ground ... she braced the muscles of her face and said nothing. It must be forgotten before she left the room that they were nearly new and her only pair; two horrid ideas, nagging and keeping things away.

8

Outside in the air daylight grew strong and clear in Miriam’s mind. Patches of day came in a bright sheen from the moonlit puddles, distributed over the square. She crossed the road to the narrow pathway shadowed by the trees that ran round the long oblong enclosure. From this dark pathway the brightness of the wet moonlit roadway was brighter and she could see faÇades that caught the moonlight. There was something trying to worry her, some little thing that did not matter at all, but that some part of her had put away to worry over and was now wanting to consider. Mag’s affairs ... no she had decided about that. It might be true about blunted sensibilities; but she had meant for some reason to let that other man kiss her, and people never ask advice until they have made up their minds what they are going to do and Mag was Mag quite apart from anything that might happen. She would still be Mag if she were old ... or mad. That was a firm settled real thing, real and absolute in the daylight of the moonlit square. She wandered slowly on humming a tune; every inch of the way would be lovely. The figure of a man in an overcoat and a bowler hat loomed towards her on the narrow pathway and stopped. The man raised his hat, and his face showed smiling with the moonlight on it. Miriam had a moment’s fear; but the man’s attitude was deprecating and there was her song; it was partly her own fault. But why why ... fierce anger at the recurrence of this kind of occurrence seized her. She wanted him out of the way and wanted him to know how angry she was at the interruption.

“Well,” she snapped angrily, coming to a standstill in the moonlit gap.

“Oh” said the man a little breathlessly in a lame broken tone, “I thought you were going this way.” “So I am,” retorted Miriam in a loud angry shaking tone, “obviously.”

The man stepped quickly into the gutter and walked quickly away across the road. St. Pancras church chimed the quarter.

Miriam marched angrily forward with shaking limbs that steadied themselves very quickly ... the night had become suddenly cold; bitter and penetrating; a north-east wind, of course. It was frightfully cold after the warm room; the square was bleak and endless; the many faÇades were too far off to keep the wind away; the pavement was very cold under her right foot; that was it; the broken sole was the worry that had been trying to come up; she could walk with it; it would not matter if the weather kept dry ... an upright gait, hurrying quickly away across the moonlit sheen; just the one she had summoned up anger and courage to challenge was not so bad as the others ... they were not bad; that was not it; it was the way they got in the way ... figures of men, dark, in dark clothes, presenting themselves, calling attention to themselves and the way they saw things, mean and suggestive, always just when things were loveliest. Couldn’t the man see the look of the square and the moonlight? ... that afternoon at Hyde Park Corner ... just when everything flashed out after the rain ... the sudden words close to her ear ... my beauty ... my sweet ... you sweet girl ... the puffy pale old face, the puffs under the sharp brown eyes. A strange ... conviction in the trembling old voice ... it was deliberate; a sort of statement; done on purpose, something chosen that would please most. It was like the conviction and statement there had been in Bob Greville’s voice. Old men seemed to have some sort of understanding of things. If only they would talk with the same conviction about other things as there was in their tone when they said those personal things. But the things they said were worldly—generalisations, like the things one read in books that tired you out with trying to find the answer, and made books so awful ... things that might look true about everybody at some time or other and were not really true about anybody—when you knew them. But people liked those things and thought them clever and smiled about them. All the things the old men said about life and themselves and other people, about everything but oneself, were sad; disappointed and sad with a glint of far off youth in their faces as they said them ... something moving in the distance behind the blue of their eyes.... “Make the best of your youth my dear before it flies.” If it all ended in sadness and envy of youth, life was simply a silly trick. Life could not be a silly trick. Life cannot be a silly trick. That is the simple truth ... a certainty. Whatever happens, whatever things look like, life is not a trick.

Miriam began singing again when she felt herself in her own street, clear and empty in the moonlight. The north wind blew down it unobstructed and she was shivering and singing ... “spring is co-ming a-and the swa-llows—have come back to te-ell me so.” Spring could not be far off. At this moment in the dark twilight behind the thick north wind the squares were green.

9

Her song, restrained on the doorstep and while she felt her already well-known way in almost insupportable happiness through the unlit hall and through the moonlight up the seventy-five stairs, broke out again when her room was reached and her door shut; the two other doors had stood open showing empty moonlit spaces. She was still alone and unheard on the top floor. Her room was almost warm after the outside cold. The row of attic and fourth floor windows visible from her open lattice were in darkness, or burnished blue with moonlight. Warm blue moonlight gleamed along the leads sloping down to her ink-black parapet. The room was white and blue lit, with a sweet morning of moonlight. She had a momentary impulse towards prayer and glanced at the bed. To get so far and cast herself on her knees and hide her face in her hands against the counterpane, the bones behind the softness of her hands meeting the funny familiar round shape of her face, the dusty smell of the counterpane coming up, her face praying to her hands, her hands praying to her face, both throbbing separately with their secret, would drive something away. Something that was so close in everything in the room, so pouring in at the window that she could scarcely move from where she stood. She flung herself more deeply into her song and passed through the fresh buoyant singing air to light the gas. The room turned to its bright evening brown. Prayer. Being so weighed down and free with happiness was the time ... sacrifice ... the evening sacrifice of praise and prayer. That is what that means. To toss all the joys and happiness away and know that you are happy and free without anything. That you cannot escape being happy and free. It always comes.

Why am I so happy and free she wondered with tears in her eyes. Why? Why do lovely things and people go on happening? To own that something in you had no right. But not crouching on your knees ... standing and singing till everything split with your joy and let you through into the white white brightness.

10

To see the earth whirling slowly round, coloured, its waters catching the light. She stood in the middle of the floor hurriedly discarding her clothes. They were old and worn, friendly and alive with the fresh strength of her body. Other clothes would be got somehow; just by going on and working ... there’s so much—eternally. It’s stupendous. I’ve no right to be in it; but I’m in. Someone means me to be in. I can’t help it. Fancy people being alive. You would think everyone would go mad. She found herself in bed, sitting up in her flannellette dressing jacket. The stagnant air beneath the sharp downward slope of the ceiling was warmed by the gas. The gaslight glared beautifully over her shoulder down on to the page....

11

All that has been said and known in the world is in language, in words; all we know of Christ is in Jewish words; all the dogmas of religion are words; the meanings of words change with people’s thoughts. Then no one knows anything for certain. Everything depends upon the way a thing is put, and that is a question of some particular civilisation. Culture comes through literature, which is a half-truth. People who are not cultured are isolated in barbaric darkness. The Greeks were cultured; but they are barbarians ... why? Whether you agree or not, language is the only way of expressing anything and it dims everything. So the Bible is not true; it is a culture. Religion is wrong in making word-dogmas out of it. Christ was something. But Christianity which calls Him divine and so on is false. It clings to words which get more and more wrong ... then there’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be quite sure of rejoicing about. The Christians are irritating and frightened. The man with side-whiskers understands something. But.