 Chapter 14 Part 1 of the Voyage Out by Virginia Wolfe. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The sun of that same day going down, dusk was saluted as usual at the hotel by an instantaneous sparkle of electric lights. The hours between dinner and bedtime were always difficult enough to kill, and the night after the dance they were further tarnished by the peevishness of dissipation. Certainly in the opinion of Hearst and Hewitt, who lay back in long arm-chairs in the middle of the hall, with their coffee-cups beside them, and their cigarettes in their hands, the evening was unusually dull, the women unusually badly dressed, the men unusually fatuous. Moreover when the mail had been distributed half an hour ago there were no letters for either of the two young men, as every other person practically had received two or three plump letters from England, which they were now engaged in reading. This seemed hard and prompted Hearst to make the caustic remark that the animals had been fed. Their silence, he said, reminded him of the silence in the lion-house when each beast holds a lump of raw meat in its paws. He went on stimulated by this comparison to liken some to hippopotamuses, some to canary-birds, some to swine, some to parrots, and some to loathsome reptiles curled round the half-decade bodies of sheep. The intermittent sounds, now a cough, now a horrible wheezing or throat clearing, now a little patter of conversation, were just, he declared, what you hear if you stand in the lion-house when the bones are being mauled. But these comparisons did not rouse Hewitt, who after a careless glance round the room, fixed his eyes upon a thicket of native spears, which were so ingeniously arranged as to run their points at you whichever way you approached them. He was clearly oblivious of his surroundings, whereupon Hearst, perceiving that Hewitt's mind was a complete blank, fixed his attention more closely upon his fellow creatures. He was too far from them, however, to hear what they were saying. But it pleased him to construct little theories about them from their gestures and appearance. Mrs. Thornbury had received a great many letters. She was completely engrossed in them. When she had finished a page she handed it to her husband, or gave him the sense of what she was reading in a series of short quotations linked together by a sound at the back of her throat. Eve he writes that George has gone to Glasgow. He finds Mr. Chadborne so nice to work with, and we hope to spend Christmas together. But I should not like to move Betty and Alfred any great distance. No quite right. Though it is difficult to imagine cold weather in this heat, Eleanor and Roger drove over in the new trap. Eleanor certainly looked more like herself than I've seen her since the winter. She has put baby on three bottles now, which I'm sure is wise. I'm sure it is, too, and so gets better nights. My hair still falls out. I find it on the pillow. But I am cheered by hearing from Totty Hall Green. Carol is in Torquay enjoying herself greatly at dances. She is going to show her black pug after all. Aligned from Herbert, so busy, poor fellow. Ah, Margaret says, poor old Mrs. Fairbanks died on the 8th. Quite suddenly in the conservatory. Only a maid in the house, who hadn't the presence of mind to lift her up, which they think might have saved her. But the doctor says it might have come at any moment. And one can only feel thankful that it was in the house, not in the street. I should think so. The pigeons have increased terribly, just as the rabbits did five years ago. While she read her husband kept nodding his head very slightly, very steadily, in sign of approval. Nearby Miss Allen was reading her letters, too. They were not altogether pleasant, as could be seen from the slight rigidity which came over her large, fine face as she finished reading them and replaced them neatly in their envelopes. The lines of care and responsibility on her face made her resemble an elderly man rather than a woman. The letters brought her news of the failure of last year's fruit crop in New Zealand, which was a serious matter. For Hubert, her only brother, made his living on a fruit farm. And if it failed again, of course, he would throw up his place, come back to England. And what were they to do with him this time? The journey out here, which meant the loss of a term's work, became an extravagance at not the just and wonderful holiday due to her after fifteen years of punctual lecturing and correcting essays upon English literature. Emily, her sister, who was a teacher also, wrote, We ought to be prepared, though I have no doubt Hubert will be more reasonable this time. And then went on in her sensible way to say that she was enjoying a very jolly time in the lakes. They are looking exceedingly pretty just now. I have seldom seen the trees so forward at this time of year. We have taken our lunch out several days. Old Alice is as young as ever, and asks after everyone affectionately. The days pass very quickly, and term will soon be here. Political prospects not good, I think privately, but do not like to damp Ellen's enthusiasm. Lloyd George has taken the bill up, but so have many before now, and we are where we are, but trust to find myself mistaken. Somehow we have our work cut out for us. Shirley Meredith lacks the human note one likes in W.W., she concluded, and went on to discuss some questions of English literature, which Miss Allen had raised in her last letter. At a little distance from Miss Allen, on a seat shaded and made semi-private by a thick clump of palm trees, Arthur and Susan were reading each other's letters. The big slashing manuscripts of hockey-playing young women in Wiltshire lay on Arthur's knee, while Susan deciphered tight little legal hands, which rarely filled more than a page, and always conveyed the same impression of jocular and breezy goodwill. I do hope Mr. Hutchinson will like me, Arthur, she said, looking up. Who's your loving Flo? asked Arthur. Flo Graves, the girl I told you about, who was engaged to that dreadful Mr. Vincent, said Susan. Is Mr. Hutchinson married? she asked. Already her mind was busy with benevolent plans for her friends, or rather with one magnificent plan, which was simple, too. They were all to get married, at once, directly she got back. Marriage! marriage, that was the right thing, the only thing. The solution required by every one she knew. And a great part of her meditations was spent in tracing every instance of discomfort, loneliness, ill health, unsatisfied ambition, restlessness, eccentricity. Putting things up and dropping them again. Public speaking, and philanthropic activity on the part of men, and particularly on the part of women, to the fact that they wanted to marry, were trying to marry, and had not succeeded in getting married. If, as she was bound to own, these symptoms sometimes persisted after marriage. She could only ascribe them to the unhappy law of nature, which decreed that there was only one Arthur Venning, and only one Susan who could marry him. Her theory, of course, had the merit of being fully supported by her own case. She had been vaguely uncomfortable at home for two or three years now. And a voyage like this, with her selfish old aunt, who paid her fare but treated her as servant and companion in one, was typical of the kind of thing people expected of her. Directly she became engaged, Mrs. Paley behaved with instinctive respect, positively protested when Susan as usual knelt down to lace her shoes, and appeared really grateful for an hour of Susan's company, where she had been used to exact two or three as her right. She therefore foresaw a life of far greater comfort than she had been used to, and the change had already produced a great increase of warmth in her feelings towards other people. It was close on twenty years now since Mrs. Paley had been able to lace her own shoes, or even to see them. The disappearance of her feet having coincided more or less accurately with the death of her husband, a man of business, soon after which event Mrs. Paley began to grow stout. She was a selfish, independent old woman, possessed of a considerable income, which she spent upon the upkeep of a house that needed seven servants and a charwoman in Lancaster Gate, and another with a garden and carriage-horses in Surrey. Susan's engagement relieved her of the one great anxiety of her life, that her son Christopher should entangle himself with his cousin. Now that this familiar source of interest was removed, she felt a little low and inclined to see more in Susan than she used to. She had decided to give her a very handsome wedding present, a check for two hundred, two hundred and fifty, or possibly conceivably it depended upon the undergardener and Huth's bill for doing up the drawing-room, three hundred pounds sterling. She was thinking of this very question, revolving the figures as she sat in her wheeled chair with a table spread with cards by her side. The patience had somehow got into a muddle, and she did not like to call for Susan to help her, as Susan seemed to be busy with Arthur. She's every right to expect a handsome present from me, of course, she thought, looking vaguely at the leopard on its hind legs. And I've no doubt she does. Money goes a long way with everyone. The young are very selfish. If I were to die, nobody would miss me but Dacons, and she'll be consoled by the will. However, I've got no reason to complain. I can still enjoy myself. I'm not a burden to any one. I like at great many things a good deal, in spite of my legs. Being slightly depressed, however, she went on to think of the only people she had known who had not seemed to her at all selfish or fond of money, who had seemed to her somehow rather finer than the general run, people she willingly acknowledged who were finer than she was. There were only two of them. One was her brother, who had been drowned before her eyes. The other was a girl, her greatest friend, who had died in giving birth to her first child. These things had happened some fifty years ago. They ought not to have died, she thought. However they did, and we selfish old creatures go on. The tears came to her eyes. She felt a genuine regret for them, a kind of respect for their youth and beauty, and a kind of shame for herself. But the tears did not fall, and she opened one of those innumerable novels which she used to pronounce good or bad or pretty middling, or really wonderful. I can't think how people come to imagine such things, she would say, taking off her spectacles and looking up with the old faded eyes that were becoming ringed with white. Just behind the stuffed leopard Mr. Elliot was playing chess with Mr. Pepper. He was being defeated, naturally, for Mr. Pepper scarcely took his eyes off the board. And Mr. Elliot kept leaning back in his chair and throwing out remarks to a gentleman who had only arrived the night before. A tall, handsome man with a head resembling the head of an intellectual ram. After a few remarks of a general nature had passed, they were discovering that they knew some of the same people. As indeed had been obvious from their appearance directly they saw each other. Ah, yes, old true fit, said Mr. Elliot. He has a son at Oxford. I've often stayed with them. It's a lovely old Jacobean house. Some exquisite grozies. One or two Dutch pictures which the old boy kept in the cellars. Then there were stacks upon stacks of prints. Oh, the dirt in that house. He was a miser, you know. The boy married a daughter of Lord Pinwell's. I know them too. The collecting mania tends to run in families. This chap collects buckles, men's shoebuckles they must be, in use between the years 1580 and 1660. The dates mayn't be right, but facts, as I say. Your true collector always has some unaccountable fad of that kind. On other points he's as level-headed as a breeder of short horns, which is what he happens to be. Then the Pinwells, as you probably know, have their share of eccentricity too. Lady Maude, for instance. He was interrupted here by the necessity of considering his move. Lady Maude has a horror of cats and clergymen and people with big front teeth. I've heard her shout across a table. Keep your mouth shut, Miss Smith. There as yellow as carrots. Across a table, mind you. To me she's always been civility itself. She dabbles in literature. She likes to collect a few of us in her drawing-room. But mention a clergyman, a bishop even. Nay, the arch-bishop himself, and she gobbles like a turkey-cock. I've been told it's a family feud, something to do with an ancestor in the reign of Charles I. Yes, he continued, suffering check after check. I've always liked to know something of the grandmothers of our fashionable young men. In my opinion they preserve all that we admire in the 18th century, with the advantage, in the majority of cases, that they are personally clean. Not that one would insult old Lady Barbaro by calling her clean. How often do you think, Hilda? He called out to his wife. Her ladyship takes a bath. I should hardly like to say, Hugh, Mrs. Elliot tittered. But wearing puse velvet, as she does even on the hottest August day, it somehow doesn't show. Pepper, you have me, said Mr. Elliot. My chess is even worse than I remembered. He accepted his defeat with great equanimity, because he really wished to talk. He drew his chair back beside Mr. Wilfred Flushing, the newcomer. Are these at all in your line, he asked, pointing at a case in front of them, where highly polished crosses, jewels, and a bit of embroidery, the work of the natives, were displayed to tempt visitors. Shams, all of them, said Mr. Flushing briefly. This rug now isn't at all bad. He stopped and picked up a piece of the rug at their feet. Not old, of course, but the design is quite in the right tradition. Alice, lend me your brooch. See the difference between the old work and the new? A lady who was reading with great concentration, unfastened her brooch and gave it to her husband without looking at him, or acknowledging the tentative bow which Mr. Elliot was desirous of giving her. If she had listened she might have been amused by the reference to old Lady Barborough, her great aunt. But oblivious of her surroundings she went on reading. The clock which had been wheezing for some minutes like an old man preparing to cough now struck nine. The sound slightly disturbed certain somnolent merchants, government officials, and men of independent means, who were lying back in their chairs, chatting, smoking, ruminating about their affairs. With their eyes half shut they raised their lids for an instant at the sound and then closed them again. They had the appearance of crocodiles so fully gorged by their last meal that the future of the world gives them no anxiety whatever. The only disturbance in the placid bright room was caused by a large moth which shot from light to light, whizzing over elaborate heads of hair and causing several young women to raise their hands nervously and exclaim, Someone ought to kill it. Absorbed in their own thoughts Hewitt and Hearst had not spoken for a long time. When the clock struck Hearst said, Ah, the creatures begin to stir. He watched them raise themselves, look about them, and settle down again. What I abhor most of all, he concluded, is the female breast. Imagine being venting and having to get into bed with Susan. But the really repulsive thing is that they feel nothing at all. About what I do when I have a hot bath. They're gross, they're absurd, they're utterly intolerable. No saying and drawing no reply from Hewitt he proceeded to think about himself. About science, about Cambridge, about the bar, about Helen and what she thought of him. Until being very tired he was nodding off to sleep. Suddenly Hewitt woke him up. How do you know what you feel, Hearst? Are you in love, asked Hearst? He put in his eyeglass. Don't be a fool, said Hewitt. Well, I'll sit down and think about it, said Hearst. One really ought to. If these people would only think about things, the world would be a far better place for us all to live in. Are you trying to think? That was exactly what Hewitt had been doing for the last half hour. But he did not find Hearst sympathetic at the moment. I shall go for a walk, he said. Remember, we weren't in bed last night, said Hearst with a prodigious yawn. Hewitt rose and stretched himself. I want to go and get a breath of air, he said. An unusual feeling had been bothering him all the evening and forbidding him to settle into any one train of thought. It was precisely as if he had been in the middle of a talk which interested him profoundly when someone came up and interrupted him. He could not finish the talk, and the longer he sat there the more he wanted to finish it. Perhaps the talk that had been interrupted was a talk with Rachel. He had to ask himself why he felt this and why he wanted to go on talking to her. Hearst would merely say that he was in love with her. But he was not in love with her. Did love begin in that way with the wish to go on talking? No. It always began in his case with definite physical sensations. And these were now absent. He did not even find her physically attractive. There was something, of course, unusual about her. She was young, inexperienced, and inquisitive. They had been more open with each other than was usually possible. He always found girls interesting to talk to, and surely these were good reasons why he should wish to go on talking to her. And last night, what with the crowd and the confusion, he had only been able to begin to talk to her. What was she doing now, lying on a sofa and looking at the ceiling, perhaps? He could imagine her doing that, and Helen in an arm chair, with her hands on the arm of it. So, looking ahead of her, with her great big eyes, oh no, they'd be talking, of course, about the dance. But suppose Rachel was going away in a day or two. Suppose this was the end of her visit, and her father had arrived in one of the steamers anchored in the bay. It was intolerable to know so little. Before he exclaimed, How do you know what you feel, Hearst? To stop himself from thinking. Chapter 14 Part 2 of the Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf The sleeper-box recording is in the public domain. But Hearst did not help him, and the other people, with their aimless movements and their unknown lives, were disturbing. So that he longed for the empty darkness. The first thing he looked for when he stepped out of the hall door was the light of the Ambrose's villa. When he had definitely decided that a certain light apart from the others higher up the hill was their light, he was considerably reassured. There seemed to be at once a little stability in all this incoherence. Without any definite plan in his head he took the turning to the right and walked through the town and came to the wall by the meeting of the roads where he stopped. The booming of the sea was audible. The dark blue mass of the mountains rose against the paler blue of the sky. There was no moon, but myriads of stars, and lights were anchored up and down in the dark waves of earth all round him. He had meant to go back, but the single light of the Ambrose's villa had now become three separate lights, and he was tempted to go on. He might as well make sure that Rachel was still there. Being fast he soon stood by the iron gate of their garden and pushed it open. The outline of the house suddenly appeared sharply before his eyes, and the thin column of the veranda cutting across the palely lit gravel of the terrace. He hesitated. At the back of the house someone was rattling cans. He approached the front. The light on the terrace showed him that the sitting-rooms were on that side. He stood as near the light as he could by the corner of the house. The leaves of a creeper brushing his face. After a moment he could hear a voice. The voice went on steadily. It was not talking, but from the continuity of the sound it was a voice reading aloud. He crept a little closer. He crumpled the leaves together so as to stop their rustling about his ears. It might be Rachel's voice. He left the shadow and stepped into the radius of the light, and then heard a sentence spoken quite distinctly. And there we lived from the year 1860 to 1895, the happiest years of my parent's lives. And there in 1862 my brother Morris was born, to the delight of his parents, as he was destined to be the delight of all who knew him. The voice quickened and the tone became conclusive, rising slightly in pitch. As if these words were at the end of the chapter, Hewitt drew back again into the shadow. There was a long silence. He could just hear chairs being moved inside. He had almost decided to go back when suddenly two figures appeared at the window, not six feet from him. It was Morris' fielding, of course, that your mother was engaged to, said Helen's voice. She spoke reflectively, looking out into the dark garden and thinking evidently as much of the look of the night as of what she was saying. Mother, said Rachel, Hewitt's heart leapt and he noticed the fact. Her voice, though low, was full of surprise. You didn't know that, said Helen. I never knew there'd been anyone else, said Rachel. She was clearly surprised. But all they said was said low and inexpressively, because they were speaking out into the cool dark night. More people were in love with her than with anyone I've ever known, Helen stated. She had that power. She enjoyed things. She wasn't beautiful, but I was thinking of her last night at the dance. She got on with every kind of person. And then she made it all so amazingly funny. It appeared that Helen was going back into the past, choosing her words deliberately, comparing Teresa with the people she had known since Teresa died. I don't know how she did it, she continued, and ceased. And there was a long pause in which a little owl called first here, then there. As it moved from tree to tree in the garden. That so like Aunt Lucy and Aunt Katie, said Rachel at last. They always make out that she was very sad and very good. Then why, for goodness' sake, did they do nothing but criticize her when she was alive, said Helen. Very gentle their voices sounded, as if they fell through the waves of the sea. If I were to die tomorrow, she began. The broken sentences had an extraordinary beauty and detachment in Hewitt's ears, and a kind of mystery too, as though they were spoken by people in their sleep. No, Rachel, Helen's voice continued. I'm not going to walk in the garden. It's damp. It's sure to be damp. Besides, I see at least a dozen toads. Toads, those are stones, Helen. Come out. It's nicer out. The flowers smell, Rachel replied. Hewitt drew still farther back. His heart was beating very quickly. Apparently Rachel tried to pull Helen out onto the terrace, and Helen resisted. There was a certain amount of scuffling and treating, resisting, and laughter from both of them. Then a man's form appeared. Hewitt could not hear what they were all saying. In a minute they had gone in. He could hear bolts grating, then there was dead silence, and all the lights went out. He turned away, still crumpling and uncrumpling a handful of leaves which he had torn from the wall. An exquisite sense of pleasure and relief possessed him. It was all so solid and peaceful after the ball at the hotel. Whether he was in love with them or not. And he was not in love with them. No, but it was good that they should be alive. Understanding still for a minute or two he turned and began to walk towards the gate. With the movement of his body, the excitement, the romance, and the richness of life crowded into his brain. He shouted out a line of poetry, but the words escaped him, and he stumbled among lines and fragments of lines which had no meaning at all except for the beauty of the words. He shut the gate and ran swinging from side to side down the hill, shouting any nonsense that came into his head. Here am I, he cried rhythmically, as his feet pounded to the left and to the right, plunging along like an elephant in the jungle, stripping the branches as I go. He snatched at the twigs of a bush at the roadside. Saying innumerable words, lovely words about innumerable things, running down hill and talking nonsense aloud to myself about roads and leaves and lights and women coming out into the darkness, about women, about Rachel, about Rachel. He stopped and drew a deep breath. The night seemed immense and hospitable. And although so dark there seemed to be things moving down there in the harbor and movement out at sea, he gazed until the darkness numbed him and then he walked on quickly, still murmuring to himself. And I ought to be in bed, snoring and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreams and realities, dreams and realities. Dreams and realities. He repeated all the way up the avenue, scarcely knowing what he said, until he reached the front door. Here he paused for a second and collected himself before he opened the door. His eyes were dazed, his hands very cold, and his brain excited and yet half asleep. Inside the door everything was as he had left it, except that the hall was now empty. There were the chairs turning in towards each other, where people had sat talking, and the empty glasses on little tables and the newspapers scattered on the floor. As he shut the door he felt as if he were enclosed in a square box and instantly shriveled up. It was all very bright and very small. He stopped for a minute by the long table to find a paper which he had meant to read, but he was still too much under the influence of the dark and the fresh air to consider carefully which paper it was or where he had seen it. As he fumbled vaguely among the papers he saw a figure cross the tail of his eye, coming downstairs. He heard the swishing sound of skirts, and to his great surprise Evelyn M. came up to him, laid her hand on the table as if to prevent him from taking up a paper, and said, You're just the person I wanted to talk to. Her voice was a little unpleasant and metallic. Her eyes were very bright, and she kept them fixed upon him. To talk to me he repeated, but I'm half asleep. But I think you understand better than most people, she answered, and sat down on a little chair placed beside a big leather chair so that Hewitt had to sit down beside her. Well, he said. He yawned openly and lit a cigarette. He could not believe that this was really happening to him. What is it? Are you really sympathetic, or is it just a pose she demanded? It's for you to say, he replied. I'm interested, I think. She still felt numb all over, and as if she was much too close to him. Anyone can be interested, she cried impatiently. Your friend Mr. Hurst's interested. I dare say, however, I do believe in you. You look as if you'd got a nice sister somehow. She paused, picking at some sequins on her knees, then as if she had made up her mind, she started off. Anyhow, I'm going to ask your advice. Do you ever get into a state where you don't know your own mind? That's the state I'm in now. You see, last night at the dance, Raymond Oliver. He's the tall, dark boy who looks as if he had Indian blood in him. But he says he's not really. Well, we were sitting out together, and he told me all about himself, how unhappy he is at home, and how he hates being out here. They put him into some beastly mining business. He says it's beastly. I should like it, I know, but that's neither here nor there. And I felt awfully sorry for him. One couldn't help being sorry for him. And when he asked me to let him kiss me, I did. I don't see any harm in that, do you? And then this morning he said he'd thought I meant something more. And I wasn't the sort to let anyone kiss me. And we talked and talked. I daresay I was very silly, but one can't help liking people when one's sorry for them. And I do like him most awfully. She paused. So I gave him half a promise. And then you see there's Alfred Parrot. Oh, Parrot, said Ewitt. We got to know each other on that picnic the other day, she continued. He seemed so lonely, especially as Arthur had gone off with Susan. And one couldn't help guessing what was in his mind. So we had quite a long talk when you were looking at the ruins. And he told me all about his life and his struggles, and how fearfully hard it had been. Do you know he was a boy in a grocer's shop and took parcels to people's houses in a basket? That interested me awfully, because I always say it doesn't matter how you're born if you've got the right stuff in you. And he told me about his sister, whose paralyzed poor girl. And one can see she's a great trial, though he's evidently very devoted to her. I must say I do admire people like that. I don't expect you do, because you're so clever. Well, last night we sat out in the garden together. And I couldn't help seeing what he wanted to say, and comforting him a little, and telling him I did care. I really do, only then there's Raymond Oliver. What I want you to tell me is, can one be in love with two people at once, or can't one? She became silent and sat with her chin on her hands, looking very intent, as if she were facing a real problem which had to be discussed between them. I think it depends what sort of person you are, said Hewitt. He looked at her. She was small and pretty, aged perhaps twenty-eight or twenty-nine. But though dashing and sharply cut, her features expressed nothing very clearly, except a great deal of spirit and good health. Who are you? What are you? You see, I know nothing about you, he continued. Well, I was coming to that, said Evelyn M. She continued to rest her chin on her hands, and to look intently ahead of her. I'm the daughter of a mother and no father, if that interests you, she said. It's not a very nice thing to be. It's what often happens in the country. She was a farmer's daughter, and he was rather a swell. The young man up at the great house. He never made things straight, never married her, though he allowed us quite a lot of money. His people wouldn't let him. Poor father! I can't help liking him. Mother wasn't the sort of woman who could keep him straight anyhow. He was killed in the war. I believe his men worshipped him. They say great big troopers broke down and cried over his body on the battlefield. I wish I'd known him. Mother had all the life crushed out of her. The world. She clenched her fist. Oh, people can be horrid to a woman like that. She turned upon Hewitt. Well, she said. Do you want to know any more about me? But you, he asked, who looked after you? I've looked after myself mostly, she laughed. I've had splendid friends. I do like people. That's the trouble. What would you do if you liked two people, both of them tremendously? And you couldn't tell which most. I should go on liking them. I should wait and see. Why not? But one has to make up one's mind, said Evelyn. Or are you one of the people who doesn't believe in marriages and all that? Look here, this isn't fair. I do all the telling, and you tell nothing. Perhaps you're the same as your friend. She looked at him suspiciously. Perhaps you don't like me. I don't know you, said Hewitt. I know when I like a person directly I see them. I knew I liked you the very first night at dinner. Oh dear, she continued impatiently. What a lot of father would be saved if only people would say the things they think straight out. I'm made like that. I can't help it. But don't you find it leads to difficulties, Hewitt asked? That's men's fault, she answered. They always drag it in. Love I mean. And so you've gone on having one proposal after another, said Hewitt. I don't suppose I've had more proposals than most women, said Evelyn. But she spoke without conviction. Five, six, ten? Hewitt ventured. Women seemed to intimate that perhaps ten was the right figure. But that it really was not a high one. I believe you're thinking me a heartless flirt, she protested. But I don't care if you are. I don't care what anyone thinks of me. Just because one's interested and likes to be friends with men, and talk to them as one talks to women, one's called a flirt. But Ms. Murgatroyd, I wish you'd call me Evelyn, she interrupted. After ten proposals, do you honestly think that men are the same as women? Honestly, honestly, how I hate that word. It's always used by prigs, cried Evelyn. Mostly I think they ought to be. That's what's so disappointing. Every time one thinks it's not going to happen. And every time it does. The pursuit of friendship, said Hewitt. The title of a comedy. You're horrid, she cried. You don't care a bit, really. You might be Mr. Hurst. Well said Hewitt, let's consider. Let us consider. He paused, because for the moment he could not remember what it was that they had to consider. He was far more interested in her than in her story. For as she went on speaking, his numbness had disappeared. And he was conscious of a mixture of liking, pity, and distrust. You've promised to marry both Oliver and Perret, he concluded. Not exactly promised, said Evelyn. I can't make up my mind which I really like best. Oh, how I detest modern life, she flung off. It must have been so much easier for the Elizabethans. I thought the other day on that mountain how I'd have liked to be one of those colonists. To cut down trees and make laws and all that, instead of fooling about with all these people who think one's just a pretty young lady. Though I'm not. I really might do something. She reflected in silence for a minute, then she said. I'm afraid right down in my heart. But Alfred Perret won't do. He's not strong, is he? Perhaps he couldn't cut down a tree, said Hewitt. Have you never cared for anybody, he asked? I've cared for heaps of people, but not to marry them, she said. I suppose I'm too fastidious. All my life I've wanted somebody I could look up to. Be great and big and splendid. Most men are so small. What do you mean by splendid, Hewitt asked? People are. Nothing more. Evelyn was puzzled. We don't care for people because of their qualities, he tried to explain. It's just them that we care for. He struck a match. Just that, he said, pointing to the flames. I see what you mean, she said, but I don't agree. I do know why I care for people, and I think I'm hardly ever wrong. I see at once what they've got in them. Now I think you must be rather splendid. But not, Mr. Hurst. Hewitt shook his head. He's not nearly so unselfish, or so sympathetic, or so big, or so understanding, Evelyn continued. Hewitt set silent, smoking his cigarette. I should hate cutting down trees, he remarked. I'm not trying to flirt with you, though I suppose you think I am, Evelyn shot out. I'd never have come to you if I'd thought you'd merely think odious things of me. The tears came into her eyes. Do you never flirt, he asked? Of course I don't, she protested. Haven't I told you? I want friendship. I want to care for someone greater and nobler than I am. And if they fall in love with me, it isn't my fault. I don't want it. I positively hate it. Hewitt could see that there was very little use in going on with the conversation. For it was obvious that Evelyn did not wish to say anything in particular, but to impress upon him an image of herself, being for some reason which she would not reveal, unhappy or insecure. He was very tired, and a pale waiter kept walking ostentatiously into the middle of the room, and looking at them meaningly. They want to shut up, he said. My advice is that you should tell Oliver and Parrot to-morrow that you've made up your mind that you don't mean to marry either of them. I'm certain you don't. If you change your mind, you can always tell them so. They're both sensible men. They'll understand. And then all this bother will be over. He got up. But Evelyn did not move. She sat looking up at him with her bright, eager eyes, in the depths of which he thought he detected some disappointment or dissatisfaction. Good night, he said. There are heaps of things I want to say to you still, she said. And I'm going to some time. I suppose you must go to bed now. Yes, said Hewitt. I'm half asleep. He left her still sitting by herself in the empty hall. Why is it that they won't be honest, he muttered to himself as he went upstairs? Why was it that relations between different people were so unsatisfactory, so fragmentary, so hazardous, and words so dangerous that the instinct to sympathize with another human being was an instinct to be examined carefully and probably crushed? What had Evelyn really wished to say to him? What was she feeling left alone in the empty hall? The mystery of life and the unreality even of one's own sensations overcame him as he walked down the corridor which led to his room. It was dimly lighted, but sufficiently for him to see a figure in a bright dressing gown pass swiftly in front of him. The figure of a woman crossing from one room to another. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf Whether too slight or too vague the ties that bind people casually meeting in a hotel at midnight, they possess one advantage at least over the bonds which unite the elderly, who have lived together once and so must live forever. Slight they may be, but vivid and genuine, merely because the power to break them is within the grasp of each, and there is no reason for continuance except a true desire that continue they shall. Even two people have been married for years they seem to become unconscious of each other's bodily presence, so that they move as if alone, speak aloud things which they do not expect to be answered, and in general seem to experience all the comfort of solitude without its loneliness. The joint lives of Ridley and Helen had arrived at this stage of community, and it was often necessary, or one or the other, to recall with an effort whether a thing had been said or only thought, shared or dreamt in private. At four o'clock in the afternoon, two or three days later, Mrs. Ambrose was standing brushing her hair, while her husband was in the dressing room which opened out of her room, and occasionally, through the cascade of water, he was washing his face. She caught exclamations. So it goes on year after year. I wish, I wish, I wish I could make an end of it, to which she paid no attention. It's white or only brown. Thus she herself murmured, examining a hair which gleamed suspiciously among the brown. She pulled it out and laid it on the dressing table. She was criticizing her own appearance, or rather approving of it, standing a little way back from the glass and looking at her own face with superb pride and melancholy, when her husband appeared in the doorway, in his shirt sleeves, his face half obscured by a towel. You often tell me I don't notice things, he remarked. Tell me if this is a white hair, then, she replied. She laid the hair on his hand. There's not a white hair on your head, he exclaimed. Ah, Ridley, I begin to doubt, she sighed, and bowed her head under his eyes so that he might judge. But the inspection produced only a kiss where the line of parting ran, and husband and wife then proceeded to move about the room, casually murmuring. What was that you were saying, Helen remarked, after an interval of conversation which no third person could have understood. Rachel, you ought to keep an eye upon Rachel, he observed significantly. And Helen, though she went on brushing her hair, looked at him. His observations were apt to be true. Young gentlemen don't interest themselves in young women's education without a motive, he remarked. Oh, Hearst, said Helen. Hearst and Hewitt, they're all the same to me. All covered with spots, he replied. He advises her to read Gibbon. Did you know that? Helen did not know that. But she would not allow herself inferior to her husband in powers of observation. She merely said, Nothing would surprise me. Even that dreadful flying man we met at the dance. Even Mr. Dalloway. Even. I advise you to be circumspect, said Ridley. There's Willoughby, remember, Willoughby, he pointed at a letter. Helen looked with a sigh at an anvil of which lay upon her dressing table. Yes, there lay Willoughby, curt, inexpressive, perpetually jocular, robbing a whole continent of mystery, inquiring after his daughters' manners and morals, hoping she wasn't a bore, and bidding them pack her off to him on board the very next ship if she were, and then grateful and affectionate with suppressed emotion, and then half a page about his own triumphs over wretched little natives who went on strike and refused to load his ships, until he roared English oaths at them, popping my head out of the window just as I was in my shirt sleeves. The beggars had the sense to scatter. If Theresa married Willoughby, she remarked, turning the page with a hairpin. One doesn't see what's to prevent Rachel. But Ridley was now off on grievances of his own connected with the washing of his shirts, which somehow led to the frequent visits of Huling Elliot, who was a bore, a pedant, a dry stick of a man, and yet Ridley couldn't simply point at the door and tell him to go. The truth of it was they saw too many people, and so on and so on. More conjugal talk pattering softly and unintelligibly, until they were both ready to go down to tea. The first thing that caught Helen's eye as she came downstairs was a carriage at the door, filled with skirts and feathers nodding on the tops of hats. She had only time to gain the drawing-room before two names were oddly mispronounced by the Spanish maid, and Mrs. Thornbury came in slightly in advance of Mrs. Wilfred Flushing. Mrs. Wilfred Flushing said Mrs. Thornbury with a wave of her hand. A friend of our common friend, Mrs. Raymond Perry, Mrs. Flushing shook hands energetically. She was a woman of forty perhaps, very well set up and erect, splendidly robust, though not as tall as the upright carriage of her body made her appear. She looked Helen straight in the face and said, You have a charming house. She had a strongly marked face, her eyes looked straight at you, and though naturally she was imperious in her manner, she was nervous at the same time. Mrs. Thornbury acted as interpreter, making things smooth all round by a series of charming commonplace remarks. I've taken it upon myself, Mr. Ambrose, she said, to promise that you will be so kind as to give Mrs. Flushing the benefit of your experience. I'm sure no one here knows the country as well as you do. No one takes such wonderful long walks. No one, I'm sure, has your encyclopedic knowledge upon every subject. Mr. Wilfred Flushing is a collector. He has discovered really beautiful things already. I had no notion that the peasants were so artistic, though of course in the past. Not old things, new things, interrupted Mrs. Flushing currently. That is, if he takes my advice. The Ambroses had not lived for many years in London without knowing something of a good many people. By name at least, and Helen remembered hearing of the Flushings. Mr. Flushing was a man who kept an old furniture shop. He had always said he would not marry because most women have red cheeks, and would not take a house because most houses have narrow staircases, and would not eat meat because most animals bleed when they are killed. But then he had married an eccentric aristocratic lady, who certainly was not pale, who looked as if she ate meat, who had forced him to do all the things he most disliked. And this, then, was the lady. Helen looked at her with interest. They had moved out into the garden where the tea was laid under a tree, and Mrs. Flushing was helping herself to cherry-jam. She had a peculiar jerking movement of the body when she spoke, which caused the canary-coloured plume on her hat to jerk too. Her small but finely cut and vigorous features, together with the deep red of lips and cheeks, pointed to many generations of well-trained and well-nourished ancestors behind her. Even that's more than twenty years old interests me, she continued. Moldy old pictures, dirty old books. They stick them in museums when they're only fit for burning. I quite agree, Helen laughed. But my husband spends his life in digging up manuscripts which nobody wants. She was amused by Ridley's expression of startle disapproval. There's a clever man in London called John, who paints ever so much better than the old masters. Mrs. Flushing continued. His pictures excite me. Nothing that's old excites me. But even his pictures will become old, Mrs. Thornbury intervened. Then I'll have them burnt, or I'll put it in my well, said Mrs. Flushing. And Mrs. Flushing lived in one of the most beautiful old houses in England. Chillingly, Mrs. Thornbury explained to the rest of them. If I'd my way, I'd burn that tomorrow, Mrs. Flushing laughed. She had a laugh like the cry of a jay, at once startling and joyless. What does any sane person want with those great big houses, she demanded? If you go downstairs after dark you're covered with black beetles. And the electric light's always going out. What would you do if spiders came out of the tap when you turned on the hot water? She demanded, fixing her eye on Helen. Mrs. Ambrose shrugged her shoulders with a smile. This is what I like, said Mrs. Flushing. She jerked her head at the villa. A little house in a garden. I had one once in Ireland. One could lie in bed in the morning and pick roses outside the window with one's toes. And the gardeners, weren't they surprised, Mrs. Thornbury inquired. There were no gardeners, Mrs. Flushing chuckled. Nobody but me and an old woman without any teeth. You know the poor in Ireland lose their teeth after their twenty. But you wouldn't expect a politician to understand that. Arthur Balfour wouldn't understand that. Ridley sighed that he never expected anyone to understand anything, least of all politicians. However he concluded, there's one advantage I find in extreme old age. Everything matters a hang except one's food and one's digestion. All I ask is to be left alone to mold her away in solitude. It's obvious that the world's going as fast as it can, too. The nethermost pit. And all I can do is to sit still and consume as much of my own smoke as possible. He groaned and with a melancholy glance laid the jam on his bread. Before he felt the atmosphere of this abrupt lady distinctly unsympathetic. I always contradict my husband when he says that, said Mrs. Thornbury, sweetly. You men, where would you be if it weren't for the women? Read the symposium, said Ridley grimly. Symposium? cried Mrs. Flushing. That's Latin or Greek. Tell me, is there a good translation? No, said Ridley. You will have to learn Greek. Mrs. Flushing cried. Ah, ah, ah, I'd rather break stones in the road. I always envy the men who break stones and sit on those nice little heaps all day, wearing spectacles. I'd infinitely rather break stones than clean out poultry runs, or feed the cows, or hear Rachel came up from the lower garden with a book in her hand. What's that book, said Ridley, when she had shaken hands? It's Gibbon, said Rachel, as she sat down. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire, said Mrs. Thornbury. A very wonderful book, I know. My dear father was always quoting it at us, with the result that we resolved never to read a line. Gibbon the historian inquired Mrs. Flushing. I connect him with some of the happiest hours of my life. We used to lie in bed and read Gibbon about the massacres of the Christians, I remember, when we were supposed to be asleep. It's no joke, I can tell you, reading a great big book in double columns, by a night light, and the light that comes through a chink in the door. Then there were the moths, tiger moths, yellow moths, and harrid cock-chafers. Louisa, my sister, would have the window open. I wanted it shut. We fought every night of our lives over that window. Have you ever seen a moth dine in a night light? She inquired. Again there was an interruption. Hewitt and Hearst appeared at the drawing-room window, and came up to the tea-table. Rachel's heart beat hard. She was conscious of an extraordinary intensity in everything, as though their present stripped some cover off the surface of things. But the greetings were remarkably commonplace. Excuse me, said Hearst, rising from his chair directly he had sat down. He went into the drawing-room, and returned with a cushion which he placed carefully upon his seat. Rheumatism he remarked as he sat down for the second time. The result of the dance Helen inquired. After I get it all run down I tend to be rheumatic, Hearst stated. He bent his wrist back sharply. I hear little pieces of chalk grinding together. Rachel looked at him. She was amused, and yet she was respectful. If such a thing could be the upper part of her face seemed to laugh, and the lower part to check its laughter, Hewitt picked up the book that lay on the ground. You like this, he asked, in an undertone. No, I don't like it, she replied. She had indeed been trying all the afternoon to read it, and for some reason the glory which she had perceived at first had faded. And read as she would, she could not grasp the meaning with her mind. It goes round, round, round, like a roll of oilcloth she hazarded. Evidently she meant Hewitt alone to hear her words. But Hearst demanded, What do you mean? She was instantly ashamed of her figure of speech, for she could not explain it in words of sober criticism. Surely it's the most perfect style. So far as style goes, that's ever been invented, he continued. Every sentence is practically perfect, and the wit. Ugly and body repulsive in mind, she thought, instead of thinking about Gibbon's style. Yes, but strong, searching, unyielding in mind. She looked at his big head, a disproportionate part of which was occupied by the forehead. And at the direct, severe eyes. I give you up in despair, he said. He meant it lightly, but she took it seriously, and believed that her value as a human being was lessened because she did not happen to admire the style of Gibbon. The others were talking now in a group about the native villages which Mrs. Flushing ought to visit. I despair too, she said impetuously. How are you going to judge people merely by their minds? You agree with my spinster aunt, I expect, said St. John in his jaunty manner, which was always irritating because it made the person he talked to appear unduly clumsy and in earnest. Be good, sweet maid. I thought Mr. Kingsley and my aunt were now obsolete. One can be very nice without having read a book, she asserted. Very silly and simple her words sounded. And laid her open to derision. Did I ever deny it, Hearst inquired, raising his eyebrows. Most unexpectedly Mrs. Thornbury here intervened, either because it was her mission to keep things smooth or because she had long wished to speak to Mr. Hearst, feeling as she did that young men were her sons. I have lived all my life with people like your aunt, Mr. Hearst, she said, leaning forward in her chair. Her brown, squirrel-like eyes became even brighter than usual. They have never heard of Gibbon. They only care for their pheasants and their peasants. They are great big men who look so fine on horseback, as people must have done, I think, in the days of the Great Wars. Say what you like against them. They are animal. They are unintellectual. They don't read themselves, and they don't want others to read. But they are some of the finest and the kindest human beings on the face of the earth. You would be surprised at some of the stories I could tell. You have never guessed, perhaps, at all the romances that go on in the heart of the country. There are the people I feel, among whom Shakespeare will be born, if he is ever born again, in those old houses up among the Downs. My aunt, Hearst, interrupted, spends her life in East Lambeth among the degraded poor. I only quoted my aunt, because she is inclined to persecute people she calls intellectual, which is what I suspect misbehave race of doing. It's all the fashion now. If you're clever, it's always taken for granted that you're completely, without sympathy, understanding, affection, all the things that really matter. Oh, you Christians! You're the most conceited, patronizing, hypocritical set of old humbugs in the kingdom. Of course he continued, I'm the first to allow your country gentlemen great merits. For one thing they're probably quite frank about their passions, which we are not. My father, who is a clergyman in Norfolk, says that there is hardly a squire in the country who does not. Not about given, he would interrupt it. The look of nervous tension which had come over every face was relaxed by the interruption. You'll find him monotonous, I suppose, but you know, he opened the book and began searching for passages to read aloud. And in a little time he found a good one, which he considered suitable. But there was nothing in the world that bored Ridley more than being read aloud to. And he was, besides scrupulously fastidious as to the dress and behavior of ladies. In the space of 15 minutes he had decided against Mrs. Flushing on the ground that her orange plume did not suit her complexion, that she spoke too loud, that she crossed her legs, and finally when he saw her accept a cigarette that Hewitt offered her. He jumped up exclaiming something about bar parlors and left them. Mrs. Flushing was evidently relieved by his departure. She puffed her cigarette, stuck her legs out, and examined Helen closely as to the character and reputation of their common friend, Mrs. Raymond Parry. By a series of little stratagems she drove her to define Mrs. Parry as somewhat elderly, by no means beautiful, very much made up, an insolent old harridan, in short whose parties were amusing because one met odd people. But Helen herself always pitied poor Mr. Parry, who was understood to be shut up downstairs with cases full of gems, while his wife enjoyed herself in the drawing room. Not that I believe what people say against her, although she hints, of course. Upon which Mrs. Flushing cried out with delight, She's my first cousin, go on, go on. When Mrs. Flushing rose to go, she was obviously delighted with her new acquaintances. She made three or four different plans for meeting or going on an expedition, or showing Helen the things they had bought, on her way to the carriage. She included them all in a vague but magnificent invitation. As Helen returned to the garden again, Ridley's words of warning came into her head, and she hesitated a moment and looked at Rachel sitting between Hearst and Hewitt. But she could draw no conclusions, for Hewitt was still reading Gibbon aloud, and Rachel, for all the expressions she had, might have been a shell, and his words water rubbing against her ears, as water rubs a shell on the edge of a rock. Hewitt's voice was very pleasant. When he reached the end of the period Hewitt stopped, and no one volunteered any criticism. I do adore the aristocracy, Hearst explained, after a moment's pause. They're so amazingly unscrupulous. None of us would dare to behave as that woman behaves. What I like about them, said Helen as she sat down, is that they're so well put together. And Mrs. Flushing would be superb. Dressed as she dresses, it's absurd, of course. Yes, said Hearst, a shade of depression crossed his face. I've never weighed more than ten stone in my life, he said, which is ridiculous considering my height. And I've actually gone down in weight since we came here. I dare say that accounts for the rheumatism. When he jerked his wrist back sharply, so that Helen might hear the grinding of the chalk stones, she could not help smiling. It's no laughing matter for me, I assure you, he protested. My mother's a chronic invalid, and I'm always expecting to be told that I've got heart disease myself. Rheumatism always goes to the heart in the end. For goodness sake, Hearst, Hewitt protested. Helen might think you were an old cripple of eighty. If it comes to that, I had an aunt who died of cancer myself. But I put a bold face on it. He rose and began tilting his chair backwards and forwards on its hind flags. Is anyone here inclined for a walk, he said? There's a magnificent walk up behind the house. You come out on to a cliff and look right down into the sea. The rocks are all red. You can see them through the water. The other day I saw a sight that fairly took my breath away. About twenty jellyfish, semi-transparent, pink with long streamers floating on the top of the waves. Sure they weren't mermaids, said Hearst. It's much too hot to climb a pill. He looked at Helen, who showed no signs of moving. Yes, it's too hot, Helen decided. There was a short silence. I'd like to come, said Rachel. But she might have said that anyhow. Helen thought to herself as Hewitt and Rachel went away together, and Helen was left alone with St. John. To St. John's obvious satisfaction. He may have been satisfied, but his usual difficulty in deciding that one subject was more deserving of notice than another prevented him from speaking for some time. He sat staring intently at the head of a dead match, while Helen considered. So it seemed from the expression of her eyes. Something not closely connected with the present moment. At last St. John exclaimed, Damn, damn everything, damn everybody, he added. At Cambridge there are people to talk to. At Cambridge there are people to talk to Helen echoed him, rhythmically and absent-mindedly. Then she woke up. By the way, have you settled what you're going to do? Is it to be Cambridge or the bar? He pursed his lips, but made no immediate answer. For Helen was still slightly inattentive. She had been thinking about Rachel, and which of the two young men she was likely to fall in love with. And now, sitting opposite to Hearst, she thought, He's ugly. It's a pity they're so ugly. She did not include Hewitt in this criticism. She was thinking of the clever, honest, interesting young men she knew, of whom Hearst was a good example, and wondering whether it was necessary that thought and scholarship should thus maltreat their bodies and should elevate their minds to a very high tower from which the human race appeared to them like rats and mice squirming on the flat. And the future, she reflected, vaguely envisaging a race of men becoming more and more like Hearst, and a race of women becoming more and more like Rachel. Oh, no, she concluded, glancing at him. One wouldn't marry you. Well then, the future of the race is in the hands of Susan and Arthur. No, that's dreadful. Of farm laborers. No. Not of the English at all. Not of Russians and Chinese. This train of thought did not satisfy her, and was interrupted by Syngin, who began again. I wish you knew Bennett. He's the greatest man in the world. Bennett, she inquired. Becoming more at ease, Syngin dropped the concentrated abruptness of his manner, and explained that Bennett was a man who lived in an old windmill six miles out of Cambridge. He lived the perfect life according to Syngin. Very lonely, very simple, caring only for the truth of things. Always ready to talk, and extraordinarily modest, though his mind was of the greatest. Don't you think, said Syngin, when he had done describing him, that kind of thing makes this kind of thing rather flimsy? Did you notice at tea how poor old Hewitt had to change the conversation, how they were all ready to pounce upon me because they thought I was going to say something improper? It wasn't anything, really. If Bennett had been there, he'd have said exactly what he'd meant to say, or he'd have got up and gone. But there's something rather bad for the character in that. I mean if one hasn't got Bennett's character. It's inclined to make one bitter. Should you say that I was bitter? Helen did not answer, and he continued. Of course I am, disgustingly bitter, and it's a beastly thing to be. But the worst of me is that I'm so envious. I envy everyone. I can't endure people who do things better than I do. Perfectly absurd things, too. Waiters balancing piles of plates. Even Arthur, because Susan's in love with him. I want people to like me, and they don't. It's partly my appearance, I expect, he continued. Though it's an absolute lie to say I've Jewish blood in me. As a matter of fact, we've been in Norfolk, Hearst of Hearst-Born Hall, for three centuries at least. It must be awfully soothing to be like you. Everyone liking one at once. I assure you they don't, Helen laughed. They do, said Hearst, with conviction. In the first place you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. In the second you have an exceptionally nice nature. If Hearst had looked at her instead of looking intently at his teacup, he would have seen Helen blush. Partly with pleasure, partly with an impulse of affection towards the young man who had seemed, and would seem again, so ugly and so limited. She pitied him, for she suspected that he suffered, and she was interested in him. For many of the things he said seemed to her true. She admired the morality of youth, and yet she felt imprisoned. As if her instinct were to escape to something brightly colored and impersonal, which she could hold in her hands. She went into the house and returned with her embroidery. But he was not interested in her embroidery. He did not even look at it. About Miss Bin Race he began. Oh, look here! Do let's be singin' and Helen, and Rachel and Terence. What's she like? Does she reason? Does she feel? Or is she merely a kind of footstool? Oh, no, said Helen, with great decision. From her observations at tea she was inclined to doubt whether Hurst was the person to educate Rachel. She had gradually come to be interested in her niece and fond of her. She disliked some things about her very much, and was amused by others. But she felt her on the whole, alive if unformed human being, experimental and not always fortunate in her experiments. But with powers of some kind, and a capacity for feeling. Somewhere in the depths of her too she was bound to Rachel by the indestructible, if inexplicable, ties of sex. She seems vague, but she's a will of her own, she said, as if in the interval she had run through her qualities. The embroidery, which was a matter for thought, the design being difficult and the colors wanting consideration, brought lapses into the dialogue when she seemed to be engrossed in her skeins of silk, or with head a little drawn back and eyes narrowed, considered the effect of the whole. Next she said merely, mm, to Syngin's next remark, I shall ask her to go for a walk with me. Perhaps he resented this division of attention. He sat silent, watching Helen closely. You're absolutely happy, he proclaimed at last. Yes, Helen inquired, sticking in her needle. Marriage, I suppose, said Syngin. Yes, said Helen, gently drawing her needle out. Children, Syngin inquired. Yes, said Helen, sticking her needle in again. I don't know why I'm happy, she suddenly laughed, looking him full in the face. There was a considerable pause. There's an abyss between us, said Syngin. His voice sounded as if it issued from the depths of a cavern in the rocks. You're infinitely simpler than I am. Women always are, of course. That's the difficulty. One never knows how a woman gets there. Supposing all the time you're thinking, oh, what a morbid young man! Helen sat and looked at him with her needle in her hand. From her position she saw his head in front of the dark pyramid of a magnolia tree, with one foot raised on the rung of a chair and her elbow out in the attitude for sewing. Her own figure possessed the sublimity of a woman's of the early world, spinning the thread of fate. The sublimity possessed by many women of the present day, who fall into the attitude required by scrubbing or sewing. Syngin looked at her. I suppose you've never paid anyone a compliment in the course of your life, he said irrelevantly. I spoil Ridley rather, Helen considered. I'm going to ask you point blank. Do you like me? After a certain pause she replied, yes, certainly. Thank God, he exclaimed. That's one mercy. You see, he continued with emotion. I'd rather you liked me than anyone I've ever met. What about the five philosophers, said Helen, with a laugh, stitching firmly and swiftly at her canvas? I wish you'd described them. Hurst had no particular wish to describe them, but when he began to consider them he found himself soothed and strengthened, far away to the other side of the world as they were. In smoky rooms and gray medieval courts they appeared remarkable figures, free-spoken men with whom one could be at ease. Many more subtle in emotion than the people here. They gave him certainly what no woman could give him, not Helen even. Warming at a thought of them he went on to lay his case before Mrs. Ambrose. Should he stay on at Cambridge or should he go to the bar? One day he thought one thing, another day another. Helen listened attentively. At last, without any preface, she pronounced her decision. Leave Cambridge and go to the bar, she said. He pressed her for her reasons. I think you'd enjoy London more, she said. It did not seem a very subtle reason, but she appeared to think it sufficient. She looked at him against the background of flowering magnolia. There was something curious in the sight. Perhaps it was that the heavy wax-like flowers were so smooth and inarticulate. And his face he had thrown his hat away. His hair was rumpled. He had his eyeglasses in his hand, so that a red mark appeared on either side of his nose. Was so worried and garrulous. It was a beautiful bush, spreading very widely, and all the time she had sat there talking. She had been noticing the patches of shade and the shape of the leaves, and the way the great white flowers sat in the midst of the green. She had noticed it half-consciously, nevertheless the pattern had become part of their talk. She laid down her sewing, and began to walk up and down the garden, and hurst rose to and paced by her side. He was rather disturbed, uncomfortable, and full of thought. Neither of them spoke. The sun was beginning to go down, and a change had come over the mountains, as if they were robbed of their earthly substance, and composed merely of intense blue mist. Long thin clouds of flamingo red, with edges like the edges of curled ostrich feathers, lay up and down the sky at different altitudes. The roofs of the town seemed to have sunk lower than usual. The cypresses appeared very black between the roofs, and the roofs themselves were brown and white. As usual in the evening, single cries and single bells became audible, rising from beneath. Syngin stopped suddenly. Well, you must take the responsibility, he said. I've made up my mind. I shall go to the bar. His words were very serious, almost emotional. They recalled Helen after a second's hesitation. I'm sure you're right, she said formally, and shook the hand he held out. You'll be a great man, I'm certain. Then as if to make him look at the scene, she swept her hand round the immense circumference of the view. On the sea, over the roofs of the town, across the crests of the mountains, over the river and the plain, and again across the crests of the mountains, it swept until it reached the villa, the garden, the magnolia tree, and the figures of Hearst and herself standing together, when it dropped to her side. End of Chapter 15