I

themselves. Everything fitted in with the leghorn hats they had worn at the league garden party in the summer. She could have warned Grace then if she had heard about the hats.⁠ ⁠… Grace had not yet found out that people were arranged in groups.⁠ ⁠… The only honest thing to say now would be⁠—oh well of course with a mother and sisters like that ; don’t you see ⁠—what they are? Her mind drew a little circle round the family group. It spun round them on and on as they went through life. She frowned her certainty into the fire, ranging herself with the unknown people she knew so well. If she did not speak Grace would see in her something of the quality that was the passport into that smooth-voiced world⁠ ⁠… she imagined herself further and further into it, seeing everyday incidents, hearing conversations slide from the surfaces of minds that in all their differences made one even surface, unconscious unbroken and maddeningly unquestioning and unaware.⁠ ⁠… They were unaware of anything, though they had easy fluent words about everything⁠ ⁠… underneath the surface that kept Grace off they were⁠ ⁠… amœbæ, awful determined unconscious⁠ ⁠… octopi⁠ ⁠… frightful things with one eye, tentacles, poison-sacs⁠ ⁠… the surface made them, not they the surface; rules⁠ ⁠… they were civilisation. But they knew the rules; they knew how to do the surface⁠ ⁠… they held to them and lived by them. It was a sort of game.⁠ ⁠… They were martyrs; with empty lives⁠ ⁠… always awake, day and night, with unrelaxed wills⁠ ⁠… she turned and met frank eyes still waiting for a verdict. All the strength of Grace’s personality was quivering there; all the determined faith in reason and principle. Perhaps if she had a clear field she could disarm them⁠ ⁠… anyone, everyone. If she could get near enough they would find out her reality and her strength. But they would not want to be like her. They would run in the end from their apprehension of her, back to the things she did not see.⁠ ⁠… They had done so. He had; it was clear. Or she could not have spoken of him. If you can speak of a thing, it is past⁠ ⁠… Speaking makes it glow with a life that is not its own.⁠—There’s a lot more to tell you⁠—said Grace pressing her hand. Miriam turned from the fire; Grace was looking as she had done when