II

no past or future, nothing but the strange thing for which there were no words, something that was always there as if by appointment, waiting for one to get through to it away from everything in life. It was the thing that was nothing. Yet it seemed the only thing that came near and meant anything at all. It was happiness and realisation. It was being suspended, in nothing. It came out of oneself because it came only when one had been a long time alone. It was not oneself. It could not be God. It did not mind what you were or what you had done. It would be there if you had just murdered someone⁠ ⁠… it was only there when you had murdered everybody and everything and torn yourself away. Perhaps it was evil. One’s own evil genius. But how could it make you so blissful? What was one⁠—what had one done to bring the feeling of goodness and beauty and truth into the patch on the wall and presently make all the look of the distant world and everything in experience sound like music in a dream? She dropped her eyes. From the papered wall radiance still seemed to flow over her as she stood, defining her brow and hair, shedding a warmth in the cold room. Looking again she found the wall less bright; but within the radius of her motionless eyes everything in the brightly lit corner glowed happily; not drawing her but standing complete and serene, like someone standing at a little distance, expressing agreement.⁠ ⁠… Just in front of her a single neat warning tap sounded in the air, touching the quick of her mind.⁠ ⁠… St. Pancras clock⁠—striking down the chimney.⁠ ⁠… She ran across to the dark lattice and flung it open. In the air hung the echo of the first deep boom from Westminster. St. Pancras and the nearer clocks were telling themselves off against it. They would have finished long before Big Ben came to an end. Which was midnight? Let it be St. Pancras. She counted swiftly backwards; four strokes.⁠ ⁠… Out in the darkness the dark world was turning away from darkness. Within the spaces of the night the surface of a daylit landscape gleamed for an instant tilted lengthways across the sky.⁠ ⁠… Little sounds came snapping faintly up through the darkness from the street below, voices and the creaking open of doors. Windows were being pushed open