one man brought to book, arrested and illuminated. But what was it? That men are not worthy of women. He would agree, and remain pleading. That men never have, never can, understand the least thing about even the worst woman in the world? He would find things to say. She plunged back groping for weapons of statement, amongst the fixities of the world, there from the beginning, and pressing at last with their mocking accomplishment, against her small thread of existence. Long grappling in darkness against the inexorable images, she fell back at last upon wordless repudiation, and again the gulf of isolation opened before her. The struggle was not to be borne. It was monstrous, unforgivable, that it should be demanded of her. Yet it could not be given up. The smallest glance in the direction of even the simulation of acceptance, brought a panic sense of treachery that flung her back to cling once more to the vanishing securities of her own untouched imagination.
When at last he appeared, the sight of the familiar distinctive little figure plunging energetically along, beard first, through the north London Sunday evening crowd drifting about the park gates, their sounds quenched by the blare of the Salvation Army’s band marching townwards along the battered road, for one strange moment while a moving light came across the gravel pathway at her feet, decking its shabby fringe of grass with the dewy freshness of some remembered world far away and unknown to this trampling blind north London, she asked herself what all the trouble was about. What after all had changed? Not herself, that was clear. Walking in fevered darkness had not destroyed the light. But he had joined her, pulling up before her with white ravaged face and hands stretched silently towards her.
“For pity’s sake don’t touch me,” she cried involuntarily and walked on, accompanied, examining her outcry. It was right. It had a secret knowledge . They rode in silence on tram and bus. Below them on the dimly-lit pavements people moved, shadows broken loose and scattered in the grey of night. Gaslit, talking faces succeeded each other under the