flowing in. Even Jewish houses were porous to the life of the world, and to have a house, however strangely shaped one’s life, would be to have a vantage point for breathing in the life of the world. … She stood in a lull, reprieved, her endlessly revolving problem left behind, the future in abeyance, perhaps to be shown her by the woman waiting within, set in surroundings that now called to her jubilantly, proclaiming themselves to be the only object of her visit. For a moment she found herself back in her old sense of the marvel of existence, gazing at the miraculous spectacle of people and things, existing; herself, however, perplexed and resourceless, within it, everything sinking into insignificance beside the fact of being alive, having lived on to another moment of unexplainable glorious happiness. Light-heartedly she rang the bell. The small movement of her lifted hand was supported, a permitted part of the whole tremendous panorama; and in that whole she was England , a link in the worldwide being of England and English life. The bell, grinding out its summons within the house, brought her back within the limits of the occasion, but she could not drive away the desire to go forward without return, claiming welcome and acceptance, in a life permanently set in beauty.
The door flew open revealing a tall resentfully handsome butler past whom she went confidently announcing her appointment, into an immense hall, its distances leading in every direction to doors, suggesting a variety of interiors beyond her experience. She was left standing. Someone who had come up the steps as the door opened, was being swiftly conveyed, a short squat polished wealthy old English Jew with curly grey hair and an eager busy plunging gait, across the hall to the centremost door. It opened on a murmur of voices and the light from within fell upon a table just outside, its surface crowded with gleaming top-hats. Some kind of men’s meeting was in progress. The woman was not in it. … Had she anticipated, before she married, what it would be, however she might fortify herself with scorn, to breathe always the atmosphere of the Jewish religious and social oblivion of women? Had