Deadlock

at all. They were wonderful for anybody. Page after page, all breathing out the way things shine when the sense of someone who is not there, is there all the time. Eve knew what it had meant to him; “age makes no difference.” Then might life suddenly shine like that at any moment, right up to the end.⁠ ⁠… And it made Eve so wonderful; having no idea, all those years, and thinking him just a very kind old man to come, driving, almost from his deathbed, with a little rose-tree in the carriage for her. It was so perfect that he wrote only after she had gone, and he knew he was dying; a youth in love for the first time. If there were a future life he would be watching, for Eve to walk gently in crowned with song and making everything sing all round her.⁠ ⁠… But what of the wife, and of Eve’s future husband? In Heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage⁠ ⁠… but Kingsley said, then that has nothing to do with me and my wife. Perhaps that was an example of the things he suddenly thought of, walking quickly up and down the garden with a friend, and introduced by saying “I have always thought.”⁠ ⁠… But perhaps the things that occur to you suddenly for the first time in conversation are the things you have always thought, without knowing it⁠ ⁠… that was one of the good things in talking to Michael Shatov, finding out thoughts, looking at them when they were expressed and deciding to change them, or think them more decidedly than ever⁠ ⁠… she could explain all that to Eve in the morning as an introduction to him. Or perhaps she could again say, having Eve’s attention free of the shop, “I have two pounds to spend on chocolate. Isn’t it extraordinary. I must, I am on my honour,” and then go on. It was horrible that Eve had hardly noticed such a startling remark.⁠ ⁠… She turned impatiently; the morning would never come; she would never sleep in this stagnant shut-in motionless air. Tomorrow night she would be in a room by herself at Harry’s; but not quite so near to the sea. How could Eve shut out life and the sound of the sea? She puffed her annoyance, hardly caring if Eve were disturbed, ready to ask her if she could not smell the smell of the house and the shop and the little back room. But that was not true. She was imagining it because the motionless air was getting on her nerves. If she could not forget it she would have no sleep until she dozed with exhaustion in the morning. And tomorrow was Christmas Day. She lay still, straining her ears to catch the sound of the sea.

The next night the air poured in at an open window, silently lifting long light muslin curtains and waving them about the little narrow room filled as with moonlight by the soft blue light from the streetlamp below. The sound of the sea drowned the present in the sense of seaside summers; bringing back moments of chance wakenings on seaside holidays, when the high blaze of yesterday and tomorrow were together in the darkness. Miriam slept at once and woke refreshed and careless in the frosty sunrise. Her room was blazing with golden light. She lay motionless, contemplating it. There was no sound in the house. She could watch the sunlight till something happened. Harry would see that she got up in time for breakfast. There would be sunlight at breakfast in the room below; and Harry and Gerald and the remains of Christmas leisure.⁠ ⁠… “We only keep going because of Elspeth.” How could she have gone off to sleep last night without recalling that? If Harry and Gerald found marriage a failure, it was a failure. Perhaps it was a passing phase and they would think differently later on. But they had spoken so simply, as if it were a commonplace fact known to everybody⁠ ⁠… they had met so many people by this time. Nearly all their lodgers had been married, and unhappy. Perhaps that was because they were nearly all theatrical people? If Harry had stayed in London and not had to work for a living would she have been happier? No; she was gayer down here; even more herself. It amused her to have rushes, and turn out three rooms after ten o’clock at night. They both seemed to run the house as a sort of joke, and remained absolutely themselves. Perhaps that was just in talking about it, at Christmas, to her. It certainly must be horrible in the season, as Harry said, the best part of the house packed with selfish strangers for the very best part of the year; so much to do for them all day that there was never even time to run down to the sea.⁠ ⁠… Visitors did not think of that. If they considered their landlady it would spoil their one fortnight of being free. Landladies ought to be old; not minding about working all day for other people and never seeing the sea. Harry was too young to be a landlady⁠ ⁠… the gently moving curtains were flat against the window again for a moment, a veil of thin muslin screening the brilliant gold, making it an even tone all over the room; a little oblong of misty golden light. Even for Harry’s sake she could not let any tinge of sadness invade it.⁠ ⁠… That was being exactly like the summer visitors.⁠ ⁠…

“Good Gracious!” The door was open and Harry, entering with a jug of hot water was enveloped in the end of the out-blown curtains. “Why on Earth d’you have your window like that? It’s simply bitter.”

“I love it,” said Miriam, watching Harriett’s active little moving form battle with the flying draperies. “I’m revelling in it.”

“Well I won’t presume to shut it; but revel up. Here you are. Breakfast’s nearly ready. Hold