was one of the “Norwegian young gentlemen” who had lived in Mrs. Reynolds’ boarding house in Woburn Place and this was just another boarding house to him. Perhaps the house was full of boarders. … She had grown accustomed to the Baileys having come up from the basement to the ground floor and had got into the habit of coming briskly through the hall with a preoccupied manner, ignoring the invariable appearance of a peeping form at the partly opened door of the dining-room. It was strange now to reflect that the house had always been full of lodgers. What sort of people had they been? She could not remember ever having met a lodger face to face, or heard any sounds in the many downstairs rooms. … Perhaps it had been partly through going out so early and coming back only when the A.B.C. closed and being out or away so much at weekends … but also she must have been oblivious. … The house had been her own; waiting for her when she found it; the quiet road of large high grey mysterious houses, the two rows of calm balconied façades, the green squares at either end, the green door she waited for as she turned unseeing into the road from the quiet thoroughfare of Endsleigh Gardens, her triumphant faithful latchkey, the sheltered dimness of the hall, the great staircase, the many large closed doors, the lonely obscurity of her empty top floor. What had come now was the fulfilment of the apprehension she had had when Mrs. Bailey had spoken the word boarders. Here they were. They would come and go and go up and downstairs from their bedrooms to that dining-room where the disturbing disclosure had been made and the unknown drawing-room. … Perhaps it would be a failure. She could not imagine Mrs. Bailey and the two vague furtive children in skimpy blue serge dresses dealing with the young Norwegian gentleman. He would not stay. … If boarders failed Mrs. Bailey might give up the house altogether. … She found herself sitting in her outdoor things with the large volume heavy on her knees in the middle of the room. She felt too languid and miserable to get up and take the small chair and the large book to the table and began wretchedly turning the pages with her gloved hands. Here it was. She glanced through the long article, reading passages here and there. There seemed to be nothing more; she had gathered the gist of it all in glancing through it at Wimpole Street. There was no need to have brought it home. It was quite clear that she belonged to the lymphatico-nervous class. It was the worst of the four classes of humanity. But all the symptoms were hers. … She read once more the account of the nervo-bilious type. It was impossible to fit into that. Those people were dark and sanguine and energetic. It was very strange. Having bilious attacks and not having the advantages of the bilious temperament. It meant having the worst of everything. No energy no initiative no hopefulness no resisting power; and sometimes bilious attacks. She was useless; an encumbrance; left out of life forever, because it was better for life to leave her out. … She sat staring at the shabby panels of her wardrobe, hating them for their quiet merciless agreement with her thoughts. To stop now and come to an end would be a relief. But there was nothing anywhere that would come in and end her. Why did life produce people with lymphatico-nervous temperaments? Perhaps it was the explanation of all she had suffered in the past; of the things that had driven her again and again to go away and away, anywhere. She wrenched herself away from her thoughts and flung forward to the sense of sunshine, sudden beautiful things, unreasonable secret happiness, waiting somewhere beyond the blackness, to come again. But it would be mean to take them. She brought nothing to anybody. She had no right to anything. She ought to be branded and go about in a cloak. … There was no one in the world who would care if she never appeared anywhere again. She sat shrinking before this thought. It was the plain and simple truth. Nothing that any kind and cheerful person might say could alter it. It would only make it worse. She wondered that she had never put it to herself before. It must always have been there since her mother’s death. There were one or two people who thought they cared. But they only cared because they did not know. It they saw more of her they would cease even to think they cared; and they had their own lives. … She had gone on being happy exactly in the same way as she had forgotten there were people in the house; just going lymphatico-nervously about with her eyes shut. But any alternative was worse. Insincere. If one could not die one must go dragging on, keeping oneself to oneself. That was why it was a relief to be in London; surrounded by people who did not know what one was really like. Social life, any sort of social life anywhere would not help. It only made it worse. Being like this was not a morbid state due to the lack of cheerful society. People who said that were wrong. The sign that they were wrong was the way they went about being deliberately cheerful and sociable. That was worse than anything; the refusal to face the truth. But at least they could endure people. … If one could not endure anyone one ought to be dead … to sit staring in front of one until one was dead … the wardrobe did not disagree. She averted her eyes as from an observer. They fell upon her hopeless person dressed in the clothes in which she moved about in the world. She was bitterly cold. But she sat on unable to summon courage to turn
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