IV

Was that being inside ? Was that all there was? The woman did not see the wonderful gold brown light in the carriage; nor the beauty of the blackness outside. In her brain was the pain and pressure of everything she had to do. She was good and sweet; perfectly good and sweet. But there was something irritating about her⁠ ⁠… her obliviousness of everything but “troubles,” other people’s as much as her own. Yet she would love a day in the country. The fields and the flowers would make her cry. It was her obliviousness that made one afraid of associating with her. Being in conversation with her or in any way associated with her life there would always be the dreadful imprisoned feeling of knowing she did not think .⁠ ⁠… Her glance slid over the other seated forms and fell, leaving her struggling between her desire to feel in loving union with them and her inability to ignore the revelations pouring from their bearing and shapes, their clothes and the way they held their belongings. They were terrible and hateful because all their thoughts were visible. The terrible maddening thing about them was the thoughts they did not think. It made them worse than the woman because to get on with them one would have to pretend to see life as they saw it. It would be so easy and deceitful with each one alone, knowing exactly what line to take. She wrenched herself back to her prayer⁠ ⁠… instantly the thought came that all these people far away in themselves wanted to be more loving. She drew herself together and sat up staring out towards the darkness. That was an answer again! A state of mind that came from the state of prayer. But then one would need always to be in a state of prayer. It would be very difficult. It would be almost impossible even to remember it in the rush of life⁠ ⁠… it would mean being a sort of fool⁠ ⁠… having no judgments or opinions. It would spoil everything. There would be no time for anything. Nothing beyond one’s daily work and all the rest of the time being all things to all men. It meant that now at this moment one must give up the sense of the train going along in the darkness and the sense of the dark streets waiting lamplit under the dark sky and go out to the people in the carriage and then on to the people at Tansley Street⁠ ⁠… she