II

and not having the advantages of the bilious temperament. It meant having the worst of everything. No energy no initiative no hopefulness no resisting power; and sometimes bilious attacks. She was useless; an encumbrance; left out of life forever, because it was better for life to leave her out.⁠ ⁠… She sat staring at the shabby panels of her wardrobe, hating them for their quiet merciless agreement with her thoughts. To stop now and come to an end would be a relief. But there was nothing anywhere that would come in and end her. Why did life produce people with lymphatico-nervous temperaments? Perhaps it was the explanation of all she had suffered in the past; of the things that had driven her again and again to go away and away, anywhere. She wrenched herself away from her thoughts and flung forward to the sense of sunshine, sudden beautiful things, unreasonable secret happiness, waiting somewhere beyond the blackness, to come again. But it would be mean to take them. She brought nothing to anybody. She had no right to anything. She ought to be branded and go about in a cloak.⁠ ⁠… There was no one in the world who would care if she never appeared anywhere again. She sat shrinking before this thought. It was the plain and simple truth. Nothing that any kind and cheerful person might say could alter it. It would only make it worse. She wondered that she had never put it to herself before. It must always have been there since her mother’s death. There were one or two people who thought they cared. But they only cared because they did not know. It they saw more of her they would cease even to think they cared; and they had their own lives.⁠ ⁠… She had gone on being happy exactly in the same way as she had forgotten there were people in the house; just going lymphatico-nervously about with her eyes shut. But any alternative was worse. Insincere. If one could not die one must go dragging on, keeping oneself to oneself. That was why it was a relief to be in London; surrounded by people who did not know what one was really like. Social life, any sort of social life anywhere would not help. It only made it worse. Being like this was not a morbid state due to the lack of cheerful society. People who said that were