Certainly it was wrong to listen to sermons … stultifying … unless they were intellectual … lectures like Mr. Brough’s … that was as bad, because they were not sermons. … Either kind was bad and ought not to be allowed … a homily … sermons … homilies … a quiet homily might be something rather nice … and have not Charity—sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. … Caritas … I have none I am sure. … Fräulein Pfaff would listen. She would smile afterwards and talk about a “schöne Predigt”—certainly. … If she should ask about the sermon? Everything would come out then.
What would be the good? Fräulein would not understand. It would be better to pretend. She could not think of any woman who would understand. And she would be obliged to live somewhere. She must pretend to somebody. She wanted to go on, to see the spring. But must she always be pretending? Would it always be that … living with exasperating women who did not understand … pretending … grimacing? … Were German women the same? She wished she could tell Eve the things she was beginning to feel about women. These English girls were just the same. Millie … sweet lovely Millie. … How she wished she had never spoken to her. Never said, “Are you fond of crochet?” … Millie saying, “You must know all my people,” and then telling her a list of names and describing all her family. She had been so pleased for the first moment. It had made her feel suddenly happy to hear an English voice talking familiarly to her in the Saal. And then at the end of a few moments she had known she never wanted to hear anything more of Millie and her people. It seemed strange that this girl talking about her brothers’ hobbies and the colour of her sister’s hair was the Millie she had first seen the night of the Vorspielen with the “Madonna” face and no feet. Millie was smug. Millie would smile when she was a little older—and she would go respectfully to church all her life—Miriam had felt a horror even of the workbasket Millie had been tidying during their conversation—and Millie had gone upstairs, she knew, feeling that they had “begun to be friends” and would be different the next time they met. It was her own fault. What had made her speak to her? She was like that. … Eve had told her. She got excited and interested in people and then wanted to throw them up. It was not true. She did not want to throw them up. She wanted them to leave her alone. … She had not been excited about Millie. It was Ulrica, Ulrica … Ulrica … Ulrica … sitting up at breakfast with her lovely head and her great eyes—her thin fingers peeling an egg. … She had made them all look so “common.” Ulrica was different. Was she? Yes, Ulrica was different … Ulrica peeling an egg and she, afterwards like a mad thing had gone into the Saal and talked to Millie in a vulgar, familiar way, no doubt.
And that had led to that dreadful talk with Gertrude. Gertrude’s voice sounding suddenly behind her as she stood looking out of the Saal window and their talk. She wished Gertrude had not told her about Hugo Wieland and the skating. She was sure she would not have liked Erica Wieland. She was glad she had left. “She was my chum,” Gertrude had said, “and he taught us all the outside edge and taught me figure-skating.”
It was funny—improper—that these schoolgirls should go skating with other girls’ brothers. She had been so afraid of Gertrude that she had pretended to be interested and had joked with her—she, Miss Henderson, the governess had said—knowingly, “Let’s see, he’s the clean-shaven one, isn’t he?”
“Rather,” Gertrude had said with a sort of winking grimace. …
They were singing a hymn. The people near her
