really realising it before asking any questions and asking them in a tone that showed he knew what it meant and going on showing all day in his manner that he knew what it was that kept her so brisk about her work. He was divine; he was a divine person. She would never forget being able to say just anyhow, h’m, I’ve got a sister coming to London; and his immediate silent approach across the room, drying his hands. … Of course the Orlys immediately said Oh how nice for you, you won’t be so lonely. What did people mean about loneliness? It was always the people arranged in groups and seeming so lost and isolated and lonely who said that. … Tonight she would begin turning out her room for Eve’s reception. No. It was the Dante lecture. … The day Eve came she would buy some flowers. She understood now why people wanted to put flowers in their rooms when people were coming. She would be a hostess. Some people bought flowers and carried them home when they were alone. … It must be like inviting a guest to keep you company. Like saying you were alone and not liking being alone and putting flowers about to tell you all the time that you did not want to be alone but were. People talked about these things. “I always buy flowers when I am alone.” Like suddenly taking off all their things and showing that they had a crooked body. If they were really miserable about being alone they would be too miserable to buy flowers. If they really wanted the flowers enough to buy them they were already not alone. If they bought the flowers in that fussy excited thoughtless way people seemed to do things they were neither really ever alone or ever really with people … they were in that sort of state that made social life a talkative nothingness sliding about on nothing. …
At the end of the afternoon she wandered forgetfully into the warmth of the empty waiting-room. The house was silent. Her footsteps made no sound along the carpeted hall and were lost in the thick Turkey carpeting of the waiting-room floor. The room was lit only by the firelight. From its wide clear core striped by black bars a broad rose-gold shaft glowed out across the room reaching the copper vessels on the black oak