The Voyage Out

  Chapter XVI

  Hewet and Rachel had long ago reached the particular place on the edgeof the cliff where, looking down into the sea, you might chance onjelly-fish and dolphins. Looking the other way, the vast expanse of landgave them a sensation which is given by no view, however extended, inEngland; the villages and the hills there having names, and the farthesthorizon of hills as often as not dipping and showing a line of mistwhich is the sea; here the view was one of infinite sun-dried earth,earth pointed in pinnacles, heaped in vast barriers, earth wideningand spreading away and away like the immense floor of the sea, earthchequered by day and by night, and partitioned into different lands,where famous cities were founded, and the races of men changed from darksavages to white civilised men, and back to dark savages again. Perhapstheir English blood made this prospect uncomfortably impersonal andhostile to them, for having once turned their faces that way they nextturned them to the sea, and for the rest of the time sat looking atthe sea. The sea, though it was a thin and sparkling water here, whichseemed incapable of surge or anger, eventually narrowed itself, cloudedits pure tint with grey, and swirled through narrow channels and dashedin a shiver of broken waters against massive granite rocks. It was thissea that flowed up to the mouth of the Thames; and the Thames washed theroots of the city of London.

  Hewet's thoughts had followed some such course as this, for the firstthing he said as they stood on the edge of the cliff was--

  "I'd like to be in England!"

  Rachel lay down on her elbow, and parted the tall grasses which grew onthe edge, so that she might have a clear view. The water was very calm;rocking up and down at the base of the cliff, and so clear that onecould see the red of the stones at the bottom of it. So it had been atthe birth of the world, and so it had remained ever since. Probably nohuman being had ever broken that water with boat or with body. Obeyingsome impulse, she determined to mar that eternity of peace, and threwthe largest pebble she could find. It struck the water, and the ripplesspread out and out. Hewet looked down too.

  "It's wonderful," he said, as they widened and ceased. The freshness andthe newness seemed to him wonderful. He threw a pebble next. There wasscarcely any sound.

  "But England," Rachel murmured in the absorbed tone of one whose eyesare concentrated upon some sight. "What d'you want with England?"

  "My friends chiefly," he said, "and all the things one does."

  He could look at Rachel without her noticing it. She was still absorbedin the water and the exquisitely pleasant sensations which a littledepth of the sea washing over rocks suggests. He noticed that she waswearing a dress of deep blue colour, made of a soft thin cotton stuff,which clung to the shape of her body. It was a body with the anglesand hollows of a young woman's body not yet developed, but in no waydistorted, and thus interesting and even lovable. Raising his eyes Hewetobserved her head; she had taken her hat off, and the face rested on herhand. As she looked down into the sea, her lips were slightly parted.The expression was one of childlike intentness, as if she were watchingfor a fish to swim past over the clear red rocks. Nevertheless hertwenty-four years of life had given her a look of reserve. Her hand,which lay on the ground, the fingers curling slightly in, was wellshaped and competent; the square-tipped and nervous fingers were thefingers of a musician. With something like anguish Hewet realised that,far from being unattractive, her body was very attractive to him. Shelooked up suddenly. Her eyes were full of eagerness and interest.

  "You write novels?" she asked.

  For the moment he could not think what he was saying. He was overcomewith the desire to hold her in his arms.

  "Oh yes," he said. "That is, I want to write them."

  She would not take her large grey eyes off his face.

  "Novels," she repeated. "Why do you write novels? You ought to writemusic. Music, you see"--she shifted her eyes, and became less desirableas her brain began to work, inflicting a certain change upon herface--"music goes straight for things. It says all there is to say atonce. With writing it seems to me there's so much"--she paused for anexpression, and rubbed her fingers in the earth--"scratching on thematchbox. Most of the time when I was reading Gibbon this afternoonI was horribly, oh infernally, damnably bored!" She gave a shake oflaughter, looking at Hewet, who laughed too.

  "_I_ shan't lend you books," he remarked.

  "Why is it," Rachel continued, "that I can laugh at Mr. Hirst to you,but not to his face? At tea I was completely overwhelmed, not by hisugliness--by his mind." She enclosed a circle in the air with her hands.She realised with a great sense of comfort who easily she could talkto Hewet, those thorns or ragged corners which tear the surface of somerelationships being smoothed away.

  "So I observed," said Hewet. "That's a thing that never ceases to amazeme." He had recovered his composure to such an extent that he couldlight and smoke a cigarette, and feeling her ease, became happy and easyhimself.

  "The respect that women, even well-educated, very able women, have formen," he went on. "I believe we must have the sort of power over youthat we're said to have over horses. They see us three times as big aswe are or they'd never obey us. For that very reason, I'm inclined todoubt that you'll ever do anything even when you have the vote." Helooked at her reflectively. She appeared very smooth and sensitive andyoung. "It'll take at least six generations before you're sufficientlythick-skinned to go into law courts and business offices. Consider whata bully the ordinary man is," he continued, "the ordinary hard-working,rather ambitious solicitor or man of business with a family to bring upand a certain position to maintain. And then, of course, the daughtershave to give way to the sons; the sons have to be educated; they have tobully and shove for their wives and families, and so it all comes overagain. And meanwhile there are the women in the background. . . . Do youreally think that the vote will do you any good?"

  "The vote?" Rachel repeated. She had to visualise it as a little bit ofpaper which she dropped into a box before she understood his question,and looking at each other they smiled at something absurd in thequestion.

  "Not to me," she said. "But I play the piano. . . . Are men really likethat?" she asked, returning to the question that interested her. "I'mnot afraid of you." She looked at him easily.

  "Oh, I'm different," Hewet replied. "I've got between six and sevenhundred a year of my own. And then no one takes a novelist seriously,thank heavens. There's no doubt it helps to make up for the drudgery ofa profession if a man's taken very, very seriously by every one--ifhe gets appointments, and has offices and a title, and lots of lettersafter his name, and bits of ribbon and degrees. I don't grudge it 'em,though sometimes it comes over me--what an amazing concoction! What amiracle the masculine conception of life is--judges, civil servants,army, navy, Houses of Parliament, lord mayors--what a world we've madeof it! Look at Hirst now. I assure you," he said, "not a day's passedsince we came here without a discussion as to whether he's to stay on atCambridge or to go to the Bar. It's his career--his sacred career. Andif I've heard it twenty times, I'm sure his mother and sister have heardit five hundred times. Can't you imagine the family conclaves, and thesister told to run out and feed the rabbits because St. John must havethe school-room to himself--'St. John's working,' 'St. John wants histea brought to him.' Don't you know the kind of thing? No wonder thatSt. John thinks it a matter of considerable importance. It is too.He has to earn his living. But St. John's sister--" Hewet puffed insilence. "No one takes her seriously, poor dear. She feeds the rabbits."

  "Yes," said Rachel. "I've fed rabbits for twenty-four years; it seemsodd now." She looked meditative, and Hewet, who had been talking much atrandom and instinctively adopting the feminine point of view, saw thatshe would now talk about herself, which was what he wanted, for so theymight come to know each other.

  She looked back meditatively upon her past life.

  "How do you spend your day?" he asked.

  She meditated still. When she thought of their day it seemed to her itwas cut into four pieces by their meal
s. These divisions were absolutelyrigid, the contents of the day having to accommodate themselves withinthe four rigid bars. Looking back at her life, that was what she saw.

  "Breakfast nine; luncheon one; tea five; dinner eight," she said.

  "Well," said Hewet, "what d'you do in the morning?"

  "I need to play the piano for hours and hours."

  "And after luncheon?"

  "Then I went shopping with one of my aunts. Or we went to see some one,or we took a message; or we did something that had to be done--the tapsmight be leaking. They visit the poor a good deal--old char-women withbad legs, women who want tickets for hospitals. Or I used to walk in thepark by myself. And after tea people sometimes called; or in summer wesat in the garden or played croquet; in winter I read aloud, whilethey worked; after dinner I played the piano and they wrote letters.If father was at home we had friends of his to dinner, and about once amonth we went up to the play. Every now and then we dined out; sometimesI went to a dance in London, but that was difficult because of gettingback. The people we saw were old family friends, and relations, but wedidn't see many people. There was the clergyman, Mr. Pepper, and theHunts. Father generally wanted to be quiet when he came home, because heworks very hard at Hull. Also my aunts aren't very strong. A house takesup a lot of time if you do it properly. Our servants were always bad,and so Aunt Lucy used to do a good deal in the kitchen, and Aunt Clara,I think, spent most of the morning dusting the drawing-room and goingthrough the linen and silver. Then there were the dogs. They had to beexercised, besides being washed and brushed. Now Sandy's dead, but AuntClara has a very old cockatoo that came from India. Everything inour house," she exclaimed, "comes from somewhere! It's full of oldfurniture, not really old, Victorian, things mother's family had orfather's family had, which they didn't like to get rid of, I suppose,though we've really no room for them. It's rather a nice house," shecontinued, "except that it's a little dingy--dull I should say." Shecalled up before her eyes a vision of the drawing-room at home; it wasa large oblong room, with a square window opening on the garden. Greenplush chairs stood against the wall; there was a heavy carved book-case,with glass doors, and a general impression of faded sofa covers, largespaces of pale green, and baskets with pieces of wool-work dropping outof them. Photographs from old Italian masterpieces hung on the walls,and views of Venetian bridges and Swedish waterfalls which members ofthe family had seen years ago. There were also one or two portraits offathers and grandmothers, and an engraving of John Stuart Mill, afterthe picture by Watts. It was a room without definite character, beingneither typically and openly hideous, nor strenuously artistic, norreally comfortable. Rachel roused herself from the contemplation of thisfamiliar picture.

  "But this isn't very interesting for you," she said, looking up.

  "Good Lord!" Hewet exclaimed. "I've never been so much interested in mylife." She then realised that while she had been thinking of Richmond,his eyes had never left her face. The knowledge of this excited her.

  "Go on, please go on," he urged. "Let's imagine it's a Wednesday. You'reall at luncheon. You sit there, and Aunt Lucy there, and Aunt Clarahere"; he arranged three pebbles on the grass between them.

  "Aunt Clara carves the neck of lamb," Rachel continued. She fixed hergaze upon the pebbles. "There's a very ugly yellow china stand infront of me, called a dumb waiter, on which are three dishes, one forbiscuits, one for butter, and one for cheese. There's a pot of ferns.Then there's Blanche the maid, who snuffles because of her nose. Wetalk--oh yes, it's Aunt Lucy's afternoon at Walworth, so we're ratherquick over luncheon. She goes off. She has a purple bag, and a blacknotebook. Aunt Clara has what they call a G.F.S. meeting in thedrawing-room on Wednesday, so I take the dogs out. I go up RichmondHill, along the terrace, into the park. It's the 18th of April--the sameday as it is here. It's spring in England. The ground is rather damp.However, I cross the road and get on to the grass and we walk along, andI sing as I always do when I'm alone, until we come to the open placewhere you can see the whole of London beneath you on a clear day.Hampstead Church spire there, Westminster Cathedral over there, andfactory chimneys about here. There's generally a haze over the low partsof London but it's often blue over the park when London's in a mist.It's the open place that the balloons cross going over to Hurlingham.They're pale yellow. Well, then, it smells very good, particularly ifthey happen to be burning wood in the keeper's lodge which is there.I could tell you now how to get from place to place, and exactly whattrees you'd pass, and where you'd cross the roads. You see, I playedthere when I was small. Spring is good, but it's best in the autumnwhen the deer are barking; then it gets dusky, and I go back through thestreets, and you can't see people properly; they come past very quick,you just see their faces and then they're gone--that's what I like--andno one knows in the least what you're doing--"

  "But you have to be back for tea, I suppose?" Hewet checked her.

  "Tea? Oh yes. Five o'clock. Then I say what I've done, and my auntssay what they've done, and perhaps some one comes in: Mrs. Hunt, let'ssuppose. She's an old lady with a lame leg. She has or she once hadeight children; so we ask after them. They're all over the world; so weask where they are, and sometimes they're ill, or they're stationed ina cholera district, or in some place where it only rains once in fivemonths. Mrs. Hunt," she said with a smile, "had a son who was hugged todeath by a bear."

  Here she stopped and looked at Hewet to see whether he was amused bythe same things that amused her. She was reassured. But she thought itnecessary to apologise again; she had been talking too much.

  "You can't conceive how it interests me," he said. Indeed, his cigarettehad gone out, and he had to light another.

  "Why does it interest you?" she asked.

  "Partly because you're a woman," he replied. When he said this, Rachel,who had become oblivious of anything, and had reverted to achildlike state of interest and pleasure, lost her freedom and becameself-conscious. She felt herself at once singular and under observation,as she felt with St. John Hirst. She was about to launch into anargument which would have made them both feel bitterly against eachother, and to define sensations which had no such importance as wordswere bound to give them when Hewet led her thoughts in a differentdirection.

  "I've often walked along the streets where people live all in a row, andone house is exactly like another house, and wondered what on earth thewomen were doing inside," he said. "Just consider: it's the beginning ofthe twentieth century, and until a few years ago no woman had ever comeout by herself and said things at all. There it was going on in thebackground, for all those thousands of years, this curious silentunrepresented life. Of course we're always writing about women--abusingthem, or jeering at them, or worshipping them; but it's never come fromwomen themselves. I believe we still don't know in the least how theylive, or what they feel, or what they do precisely. If one's a man, theonly confidences one gets are from young women about their love affairs.But the lives of women of forty, of unmarried women, of working women,of women who keep shops and bring up children, of women like your auntsor Mrs. Thornbury or Miss Allan--one knows nothing whatever about them.They won't tell you. Either they're afraid, or they've got a way oftreating men. It's the man's view that's represented, you see. Think ofa railway train: fifteen carriages for men who want to smoke. Doesn't itmake your blood boil? If I were a woman I'd blow some one's brainsout. Don't you laugh at us a great deal? Don't you think it all a greathumbug? You, I mean--how does it all strike you?"

  His determination to know, while it gave meaning to their talk, hamperedher; he seemed to press further and further, and made it appear soimportant. She took some time to answer, and during that time she wentover and over the course of her twenty-four years, lighting now on onepoint, now on another--on her aunts, her mother, her father, and at lasther mind fixed upon her aunts and her father, and she tried to describethem as at this distance they appeared to her.

  They were very much afraid of her father. He was a great dim force inthe house, by
means of which they held on to the great world which isrepresented every morning in the _Times_. But the real life of the housewas something quite different from this. It went on independently ofMr. Vinrace, and tended to hide itself from him. He was good-humouredtowards them, but contemptuous. She had always taken it for granted thathis point of view was just, and founded upon an ideal scale of thingswhere the life of one person was absolutely more important than the lifeof another, and that in that scale they were much less importance thanhe was. But did she really believe that? Hewet's words made her think.She always submitted to her father, just as they did, but it was heraunts who influenced her really; her aunts who built up the fine,closely woven substance of their life at home. They were less splendidbut more natural than her father was. All her rages had been againstthem; it was their world with its four meals, its punctuality, andservants on the stairs at half-past ten, that she examined so closelyand wanted so vehemently to smash to atoms. Following these thoughts shelooked up and said:

  "And there's a sort of beauty in it--there they are at Richmond at thisvery moment building things up. They're all wrong, perhaps, but there'sa sort of beauty in it," she repeated. "It's so unconscious, so modest.And yet they feel things. They do mind if people die. Old spinsters arealways doing things. I don't quite know what they do. Only that was whatI felt when I lived with them. It was very real."

  She reviewed their little journeys to and fro, to Walworth, to charwomenwith bad legs, to meetings for this and that, their minute acts ofcharity and unselfishness which flowered punctually from a definite viewof what they ought to do, their friendships, their tastes and habits;she saw all these things like grains of sand falling, falling throughinnumerable days, making an atmosphere and building up a solid mass, abackground. Hewet observed her as she considered this.

  "Were you happy?" he demanded.

  Again she had become absorbed in something else, and he called her backto an unusually vivid consciousness of herself.

  "I was both," she replied. "I was happy and I was miserable. You've noconception what it's like--to be a young woman." She looked straight athim. "There are terrors and agonies," she said, keeping her eye on himas if to detect the slightest hint of laughter.

  "I can believe it," he said. He returned her look with perfectsincerity.

  "Women one sees in the streets," she said.

  "Prostitutes?"

  "Men kissing one."

  He nodded his head.

  "You were never told?"

  She shook her head.

  "And then," she began and stopped. Here came in the great space of lifeinto which no one had ever penetrated. All that she had been sayingabout her father and her aunts and walks in Richmond Park, and what theydid from hour to hour, was merely on the surface. Hewet was watchingher. Did he demand that she should describe that also? Why did he sitso near and keep his eye on her? Why did they not have done with thissearching and agony? Why did they not kiss each other simply? She wishedto kiss him. But all the time she went on spinning out words.

  "A girl is more lonely than a boy. No one cares in the least what shedoes. Nothing's expected of her. Unless one's very pretty people don'tlisten to what you say. . . . And that is what I like," she addedenergetically, as if the memory were very happy. "I like walking inRichmond Park and singing to myself and knowing it doesn't matter a damnto anybody. I like seeing things go on--as we saw you that night whenyou didn't see us--I love the freedom of it--it's like being the wind orthe sea." She turned with a curious fling of her hands and looked at thesea. It was still very blue, dancing away as far as the eye could reach,but the light on it was yellower, and the clouds were turning flamingored.

  A feeling of intense depression crossed Hewet's mind as she spoke.It seemed plain that she would never care for one person rather thananother; she was evidently quite indifferent to him; they seemed tocome very near, and then they were as far apart as ever again; and hergesture as she turned away had been oddly beautiful.

  "Nonsense," he said abruptly. "You like people. You like admiration.Your real grudge against Hirst is that he doesn't admire you."

  She made no answer for some time. Then she said:

  "That's probably true. Of course I like people--I like almost every oneI've ever met."

  She turned her back on the sea and regarded Hewet with friendly ifcritical eyes. He was good-looking in the sense that he had always hada sufficiency of beef to eat and fresh air to breathe. His head was big;the eyes were also large; though generally vague they could be forcible;and the lips were sensitive. One might account him a man of considerablepassion and fitful energy, likely to be at the mercy of moods which hadlittle relation to facts; at once tolerant and fastidious. The breadthof his forehead showed capacity for thought. The interest with whichRachel looked at him was heard in her voice.

  "What novels do you write?" she asked.

  "I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; "the things peopledon't say. But the difficulty is immense." He sighed. "However, youdon't care," he continued. He looked at her almost severely. "Nobodycares. All you read a novel for is to see what sort of person the writeris, and, if you know him, which of his friends he's put in. As for thenovel itself, the whole conception, the way one's seen the thing,felt about it, make it stand in relation to other things, not one ina million cares for that. And yet I sometimes wonder whether there'sanything else in the whole world worth doing. These other people," heindicated the hotel, "are always wanting something they can't get. Butthere's an extraordinary satisfaction in writing, even in the attemptto write. What you said just now is true: one doesn't want to be things;one wants merely to be allowed to see them."

  Some of the satisfaction of which he spoke came into his face as hegazed out to sea.

  It was Rachel's turn now to feel depressed. As he talked of writing hehad become suddenly impersonal. He might never care for any one; allthat desire to know her and get at her, which she had felt pressing onher almost painfully, had completely vanished.

  "Are you a good writer?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said. "I'm not first-rate, of course; I'm good second-rate;about as good as Thackeray, I should say."

  Rachel was amazed. For one thing it amazed her to hear Thackeray calledsecond-rate; and then she could not widen her point of view to believethat there could be great writers in existence at the present day, orif there were, that any one she knew could be a great writer, and hisself-confidence astounded her, and he became more and more remote.

  "My other novel," Hewet continued, "is about a young man who is obsessedby an idea--the idea of being a gentleman. He manages to exist atCambridge on a hundred pounds a year. He has a coat; it was once a verygood coat. But the trousers--they're not so good. Well, he goes up toLondon, gets into good society, owing to an early-morning adventure onthe banks of the Serpentine. He is led into telling lies--my idea, yousee, is to show the gradual corruption of the soul--calls himself theson of some great landed proprietor in Devonshire. Meanwhile the coatbecomes older and older, and he hardly dares to wear the trousers. Can'tyou imagine the wretched man, after some splendid evening of debauchery,contemplating these garments--hanging them over the end of the bed,arranging them now in full light, now in shade, and wondering whetherthey will survive him, or he will survive them? Thoughts of suicidecross his mind. He has a friend, too, a man who somehow subsistsupon selling small birds, for which he sets traps in the fields nearUxbridge. They're scholars, both of them. I know one or two wretchedstarving creatures like that who quote Aristotle at you over a friedherring and a pint of porter. Fashionable life, too, I have to representat some length, in order to show my hero under all circumstances. LadyTheo Bingham Bingley, whose bay mare he had the good fortune to stop,is the daughter of a very fine old Tory peer. I'm going to describe thekind of parties I once went to--the fashionable intellectuals, you know,who like to have the latest book on their tables. They give parties,river parties, parties where you play games. There's no difficulty inconceiving inci
dents; the difficulty is to put them into shape--not toget run away with, as Lady Theo was. It ended disastrously for her, poorwoman, for the book, as I planned it, was going to end in profound andsordid respectability. Disowned by her father, she marries my hero, andthey live in a snug little villa outside Croydon, in which town he isset up as a house agent. He never succeeds in becoming a real gentlemanafter all. That's the interesting part of it. Does it seem to you thekind of book you'd like to read?" he enquired; "or perhaps you'd like myStuart tragedy better," he continued, without waiting for her to answerhim. "My idea is that there's a certain quality of beauty in the past,which the ordinary historical novelist completely ruins by his absurdconventions. The moon becomes the Regent of the Skies. People clap spursto their horses, and so on. I'm going to treat people as though theywere exactly the same as we are. The advantage is that, detached frommodern conditions, one can make them more intense and more abstract thenpeople who live as we do."

  Rachel had listened to all this with attention, but with a certainamount of bewilderment. They both sat thinking their own thoughts.

  "I'm not like Hirst," said Hewet, after a pause; he spoke meditatively;"I don't see circles of chalk between people's feet. I sometimes wish Idid. It seems to me so tremendously complicated and confused. One can'tcome to any decision at all; one's less and less capable of makingjudgments. D'you find that? And then one never knows what any one feels.We're all in the dark. We try to find out, but can you imagine anythingmore ludicrous than one person's opinion of another person? One goesalong thinking one knows; but one really doesn't know."

  As he said this he was leaning on his elbow arranging and rearrangingin the grass the stones which had represented Rachel and her auntsat luncheon. He was speaking as much to himself as to Rachel. He wasreasoning against the desire, which had returned with intensity, to takeher in his arms; to have done with indirectness; to explain exactly whathe felt. What he said was against his belief; all the things that wereimportant about her he knew; he felt them in the air around them; but hesaid nothing; he went on arranging the stones.

  "I like you; d'you like me?" Rachel suddenly observed.

  "I like you immensely," Hewet replied, speaking with the relief of aperson who is unexpectedly given an opportunity of saying what he wantsto say. He stopped moving the pebbles.

  "Mightn't we call each other Rachel and Terence?" he asked.

  "Terence," Rachel repeated. "Terence--that's like the cry of an owl."

  She looked up with a sudden rush of delight, and in looking at Terencewith eyes widened by pleasure she was struck by the change that had comeover the sky behind them. The substantial blue day had faded to a palerand more ethereal blue; the clouds were pink, far away and closelypacked together; and the peace of evening had replaced the heat of thesouthern afternoon, in which they had started on their walk.

  "It must be late!" she exclaimed.

  It was nearly eight o'clock.

  "But eight o'clock doesn't count here, does it?" Terence asked, as theygot up and turned inland again. They began to walk rather quickly downthe hill on a little path between the olive trees.

  They felt more intimate because they shared the knowledge of what eighto'clock in Richmond meant. Terence walked in front, for there was notroom for them side by side.

  "What I want to do in writing novels is very much what you want to dowhen you play the piano, I expect," he began, turning and speaking overhis shoulder. "We want to find out what's behind things, don't we?--Lookat the lights down there," he continued, "scattered about anyhow. ThingsI feel come to me like lights. . . . I want to combine them. . . . Haveyou ever seen fireworks that make figures? . . . I want to make figures.. . . Is that what you want to do?"

  Now they were out on the road and could walk side by side.

  "When I play the piano? Music is different. . . . But I see what youmean." They tried to invent theories and to make their theories agree.As Hewet had no knowledge of music, Rachel took his stick and drewfigures in the thin white dust to explain how Bach wrote his fugues.

  "My musical gift was ruined," he explained, as they walked on afterone of these demonstrations, "by the village organist at home, whohad invented a system of notation which he tried to teach me, with theresult that I never got to the tune-playing at all. My motherthought music wasn't manly for boys; she wanted me to kill rats andbirds--that's the worst of living in the country. We live in Devonshire.It's the loveliest place in the world. Only--it's always difficult athome when one's grown up. I'd like you to know one of my sisters. . . .Oh, here's your gate--" He pushed it open. They paused for a moment.She could not ask him to come in. She could not say that she hoped theywould meet again; there was nothing to be said, and so without a wordshe went through the gate, and was soon invisible. Directly Hewet lostsight of her, he felt the old discomfort return, even more strongly thanbefore. Their talk had been interrupted in the middle, just as he wasbeginning to say the things he wanted to say. After all, what had theybeen able to say? He ran his mind over the things they had said, therandom, unnecessary things which had eddied round and round and usedup all the time, and drawn them so close together and flung them so farapart, and left him in the end unsatisfied, ignorant still of what shefelt and of what she was like. What was the use of talking, talking,merely talking?