Botheration. Some clue had been missed. There was something incomplete in the thought that had come just now and seemed so convincing. She turned back and faced the self that had said one ought to meet everything in life with one’s eyes on the sky. It had flashed in and out, between her thoughts. Now it seemed alien. Other thoughts were coming up, the thoughts and calculations she had not meant to make, but they rushed forward, and there was something extraordinary behind them, something that was part of the sky, of her own particular sky as she knew it. She had the right to make them, having been driven away from turning them into social charm for the dining-room. Once more she turned busily to the sky, thrusting back her thoughts; but it was just the flat sky of everyday, part of London; with nothing particular to say.
Thinking it over up here, alone in the universe, could not hurt the facts. Tomorrow there would be more facts. That could not be helped, unless one died in the night or the house were burned down. Facing the empty sky, sitting between it and the empty stillness of the house she felt she was beaten; too tired now to struggle against the tide of reflections she had fled downstairs to avoid. …
Only this morning, it seemed days ago, coming into the hall at Wimpole Street, the holidays still about her, little changes in the house, the greetings, the busy bustling cheerfulness, the sense of fresh beginnings, all ending in that dreadful moment of realisation; being back in the smell of iodoform for another year; knowing that the holidays had changed nothing; that there was nothing in this life that could fulfil their promises; nothing but the circling pressing details, invisible in the distance, now all there, at a glance, horribly promising to fill her days and leave her for her share only tired evenings. Unpacking, the spell of