adjusted to a standard that would have been low
even for backs, constituted quite the publicity im
plied by such privacies. One felt them in the room
exactly as one felt the room the hundred like it,
or worse in the street. Each time she turned in
again, each time, in her impatience, she gave him
up, it was to sound to a deeper depth, while she
tasted the faint, flat emanation of things, the failure
of fortune and of honour. If she continued to wait
it was really, in a manner, that she might not add
the shame of fear, of individual, personal collapse,
to all the other shames. To feel the street, to feel
the room, to feel the table-cloth and the centre-piece
and the lamp, gave her a small, salutary sense, at
least, of neither shirking nor lying. This whole
vision was the worst thing yet as including, in par
ticular, the interview for which she had prepared
herself; and for what had she come but for the
worst? She tried to be sad, so as not to be angry;
but it made her angry that she couldn't be sad. And
yet where was misery, misery too beaten for blame
and chalk-marked by fate like a " lot " at a com
mon auction, if not in these merciless signs of mere
mean, stale feelings?

Her father's life, her sister s, her own, that of
her two lost brothers the whole history of their
house had the effect of some fine florid, voluminous
phrase, say even a musical, that dropped first into
words, into notes, without sense, and then, hang
ing unfinished, into no words, no notes at all. Why

[[4]]

p003 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p004w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p005

v?