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By Root 5815 0

letters: one kind of loneliness hammers another in. Directly the two had gone out after tea, she had gone to this drawer with the clearly realised intention of comparing the falseness of Pidgeon with the falseness of Eddie. There are phases in feeling that make the oddest behaviour quite relevant. She had said what was quite true, at least of herself, when she had told St. Quentin, last January, that experience means nothing till it repeats itself. Everything in her life, she could see now, had taken the same turn—as for love, she often puzzled and puzzled, without ever allowing herself to be fully sad, as to what could be wrong with the formula. It does not work, she thought. At times there were the moments when she asked herself if she could have been in the wrong: she would almost rather think that. What she thought she regretted was her lack of guard, her wayward extravagance—but had she all the time been more guarded than she imagined, had she been deceitful, had she been seen through? For what had always happened she could still not account. There seemed to be some way she did not know of by which people managed to understand each other.

All I said to Thomas was, to get off my quilt. After that he takes her for a walk in the park.

Ease and intelligence seemed to her to lead to a barren end. Thoughtfully, she put the key of the locked drawer into the inner pocket of her handbag, then snapped the bag shut. Anybody as superficially wounded, but at the same time as deeply nonplussed as Anna seems to himself to be a forlorn hope. This is what one gets for being so nicely nonchalant, for saving people's faces, for not losing one's hair. She could not think why she fussed so much with this key, for the drawer held no secrets: Thomas knew everything. It was true, she had never shown him these letters; though he knew what had happened he did not know how, why. Supposing she were to throw this pack of letters at Portia, saying: "This is what it all comes to, you little fool!"

At this point, Anna lighted a cigarette, sat down by her bag on the yellow sofa, and asked herself why she liked Portia so little. The idea of her never leaves me quiet, and by coming into this room she drives me on to the ice. Everything she does to me is unconscious; if it were conscious it would not hurt. She makes me feel like a tap that won't turn on. She crowds me into an unreal position, till even St. Quentin asks why do I overact? She has put me into a relation with Thomas that is no more than our taunting, feverish jokes. My only honest way left is to be harsh to them both, which I honestly am. This afternoon, directly she heard our taxi, she had to snatch open the door and wait for us, all eyes. I cannot even stand in my own window without her stopping to wave, among those cars. She might have been run over, which would have been shocking.

But, after all, death runs in that family. What is she, after all? The child of an aberration, the child of a panic, the child of an old chap's pitiful sexuality. Conceived among lost hairpins and snapshots of doggies in a Notting Hill Gate flatlet. At the same time she has inherited everything: she marches about this house like the Race itself. They rally as if she were the Young Pretender. Oh, I know Matchett's conspiratorial mouth. And it's so monstrous of Eddie; really it's so silly. As far as all that's concerned—well, Heaven help her: I don't see why I should.

Well, she'll never find any answer here, thought Anna, lying with her feet up on the sofa, unrestfully clasping her hands behind her head, asking herself what that brother and sister found to say to each other down there. It's no use her looking everywhere like that. Who are we to have her questions brought here?

Pulling the telephone towards her, Anna dialled St. Quentin's number. She heard the bell ringing for some time—quite clearly St. Quentin was out.

On Monday morning, Thomas went back to the office, Portia went back to her classes in Cavendish Square. Mild grey spring rain set in and shivered down on the trees. Thomas, who liked to