again. Yes awfully flushed Eve looking as if she were going to cry. It was too late. I suppose its awfully interesting asked Miriam formally, opening a conversation with a stranger. Mps said Eve warmly I simply love it. It makes you frightfully tired at first, but I find I can do things I never dreamed I could. I don’t mind standing in the wet a bit now. You have to if you’re obliged to. Eve was liking hardness imposed by other people. Liking the prices of her new life. Accepting them without resentment. People would despise and like her for that. Perhaps she would succeed in staying on if her strength did not give way. Her graceful dresses and leisurely brown hair going further and further away. … Do you serve ? Ssh. I’m learning to. Eve would not look, and wanted her to be gone. I’m free for lunch said Miriam snappily, holding to the disappearing glory of her first coming out into London in the middle of a weekday. Eve should have guessed and stopped being anything but Eve being taken out to lunch. We could go to an A.B.C. Oh I can’t come out murmured Eve ignoringly.
Miriam ordered another cup of coffee and went on reading. There was plenty of time. Eve would not appear at Tansley Street until half-past. In looking up at the clock she had become aware of detailed people grouped at tables. She plunged back into Norway, reading on and on. Each line was wonderful; but all in a darkness. Presently on some turned page something would shine out and make a meaning. It went on and on. It seemed to be going towards something. But there was nothing that anyone could imagine, nothing in life or in the world that could make it clear from the beginning, or bring it to an end. If the man died the author might stop. Finis. But it would not make any difference to anything. She turned the pages backwards rereading passages here and there. She could not remember having read them. Looking forward to portions of the dialogue towards the end of the book she found them familiar; as if she had read them before … she read them intently. They had more meaning read like that, without knowing to what they were supposed to refer. They were the same , read alone in scraps, as the early