When they emerged from the dusty shabbiness of the Euston Road it was suddenly a perfect June morning. Now was the moment. She opened the letter unnoticed, with her eyes on the sunlit park-lined vista … “London owes much to the fact that its main thoroughfares run east and west; walk westward in the morning down any one of them, or in the afternoon towards the east and whenever the sun shines you will see” … and without arousing his attention hurriedly read the few lines. Was that man still in London, trying to explain it to himself, or had he been obliged to go away, or perhaps to die? London is heaven and can’t be explained. To be sent away is to be sent out of heaven.
“I’ve been telling,” useless words, coming thin and helpless out of darkness and pressing against darkness … a desperate clutching at a borrowed performance to keep alive and keep on … “my employers what I think of them just lately.”
“Excellent. What have you told?”
His unconscious voice steadied her; as the darkness drove nearer bringing thoughts that must not arrive. The morning changed to a painted scene, from which she turned away, catching the glance of the leaves nearby, trickily painted, as she turned to steer the eloquence flowing up in her mind.
“Well, it was a whole point of view I saw suddenly in the train coming back after Easter. I read an essay, about a superannuated clerk, an extraordinary thing, very simple and well written, not in the least like an essay. But there was something in it that was horrible. The employers gave the old man a pension, with humorous benevolence. He is so surprised and so blissfully happy in having nothing to do but look at the