if prayer, just the turning away from all one knew begging to be destroyed and made loving brought such an immediate sense of the evil in oneself and the good in everyone else, there was no end to what it might do. Prayer was the work to do in life, nothing else. But the turning to the unseen God of love and giving up one’s self-will meant being changed in a way one could not control or foresee; dropping everything one had and cherished secretly and having things only in common with other people. It would mean going forward with nothing into an unknown world; always being agreeable, and agreeing. I love all these people she murmured in her mind and felt a glow that seemed to radiate out to all the corners of the compartment. It’s true. This is life. This is the only way in. It may be that I am so bad that I can only sit with all my evil visible silent amongst humanity for the rest of my life, learning to love them, and then die out completely because I am too bad to be quite newborn … her eyes were drawn towards the face of the woman sitting opposite to her; a shapeless body, a thin ravaged face strained and sheeny with fatigue and wearing an expression of undaunted sweetness and patience. Children and housework and a selfish husband and nothing in life of her own. She was at the disposal of everyone for kind actions. She would be really sympathetic and shocked about an earthquake in China. Was that it? Was that being inside? Was that all there was? The woman did not see the wonderful gold brown light in the carriage; nor the beauty of the blackness outside. In her brain was the pain and pressure of everything she had to do. She was good and sweet; perfectly good and sweet. But there was something irritating about her … her obliviousness of everything but “troubles,” other people’s as much as her own. Yet she would love a day in the country. The fields and the flowers would make her cry. It was her obliviousness that made one afraid of associating with her. Being in conversation with her or in any way associated with her life there would always be the dreadful imprisoned feeling of knowing she did not think. … Her glance slid over the other seated forms and fell, leaving her struggling between her desire to feel in loving union with them and her inability to ignore the revelations pouring from their bearing and shapes, their clothes and the way they held their belongings. They were terrible and hateful because all their thoughts were visible. The terrible maddening thing about them was the thoughts they did not think. It made them worse than the woman because to get on with them one would have to pretend to see life as they saw it. It would be so easy and deceitful with each one alone, knowing exactly what line to take. She wrenched herself back to her prayer … instantly the thought came that all these people far away in themselves wanted to be more loving. She drew herself together and sat up staring out towards the darkness. That was an answer again! A state of mind that came from the state of prayer. But then one would need always to be in a state of prayer. It would be very difficult. It would be almost impossible even to remember it in the rush of life … it would mean being a sort of fool … having no judgments or opinions. It would spoil everything. There would be no time for anything. Nothing beyond one’s daily work and all the rest of the time being all things to all men. It meant that now at this moment one must give up the sense of the train going along in the darkness and the sense of the dark streets waiting lamplit under the dark sky and go out to the people in the carriage and then on to the people at Tansley Street … she thought of people she knew who did this, appearing to see nothing in life but people, and recoiled. Places to them were nothing but people; there was something they missed out that could not be given up. Something goes if you lose yourself in humanity. You cannot find humanity by looking for God only there. Making up your mind that God is to be found in humanity is humanism. … It was Comte’s idea. Perhaps Unitarians are all Comtists. That is why they dress without style. They are more interested in social reform than the astoundingness of there being people anywhere. But to see God everywhere is pantheism. What is Christianity? Where are Christians? Evangelicals are humanitarians; rushing about in ulsters. Anglicans know all about the beauty of life and like comfort. But they are snobs and afraid of new ideas … convents and monasteries stop your mind. But there is a God or a Christ, there is something always there to answer when you turn away to it from everything. Perhaps one would have to remain silent, for years, for a lifetime, and in the end begin to understand.
At Gower Street it was eleven o’clock. She was faint with hunger. She had had no dinner and there was nothing in her room. She wandered along the Euston Road hoping to meet a potato-man. The shopfronts were black. There was nothing to meet her need but the empty stretch of lamplit pavement leading on and on. … Rapid walking in the rain-freshened air relieved her faintness but she dreaded waking in the night with gnawing hunger to keep her awake and drag her up exhausted in the morning. A faint square of brighter light on the pavement ahead came like an accusation. Passing swiftly across it she glanced bitterly at the frosted door through which it came. Restaurant. Donizetti Brothers. The whole world had conspired to leave her
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