that when we write of a woman, everything is out of place—culminations and perorations; the accent never falls where it does with a man). Fame! she repeated. A poet—a charlatan; both every morning as regularly as the post comes in. To dine, to meet; to meet, to dine; fame—fame! (She had here to slow down to pass through the crowd of market people. But no one noticed her. A porpoise in a fishmonger’s shop attracted far more attention than a lady who had won a prize and might, had she chosen, have worn three coronets one on top of another on her brow.) Driving very slowly she now hummed as if it were part of an old song, “With my guineas I’ll buy flowering trees, flowering trees, flowering trees and walk among my flowering-trees and tell my sons what fame is.” So she hummed, and now all her words began to sag here and there like a barbaric necklace of heavy beads. “And walk among my flowering trees,” she sang, accenting the words strongly, “and see the moon rise slow, the wagons go. …” Here she stopped short, and looked ahead of her intently at the bonnet of the car in profound meditation.
“He sat at Twitchett’s table,” she mused, “with a dirty ruff on. … Was it old Mr. Baker come to measure the timber? Or was it Sh—p—re? (for when we speak names we deeply reverence to ourselves we never speak them whole). She gazed for ten minutes ahead of her, letting the car come almost to a standstill.
“Haunted!” she cried, suddenly pressing the accelerator. “Haunted! ever since I was a child. There flies the wild goose. It flies past the window out to sea. Up I jumped (she gripped the steering-wheel tighter) and stretched after it. But the goose flies too fast. I’ve seen it, here—there—there—England, Persia, Italy. Always it flies fast out to sea and always I fling after it words like nets (here she flung her hand out) which shrivel as I’ve seen nets shrivel drawn on deck with only seaweed in them; and sometimes there’s an inch of silver—six words—in the bottom of the net. But never the great fish who lives in the coral groves.” Here she bent her head, pondering deeply.