"I saw Hilaria yesterday," said Carminow, "and I asked her if she wanted to see you two. I thought she might, but she waited a minute and then let me know most unmistakably that she would rather not. She can only speak very queerly now--most painful business--and make a few gestures, but there was no mistaking her. I expect it would have been too much for her anyway." Both his listeners felt a half-guilty relief, and that night when alone in his room Ishmael, aided by that glimpse of the exterior of her surroundings and by Carminow's words, was assailed again by the thought of her, but not as keenly as before. Shocked senses had been responsible for that first keenness, and imagination, however aided, could not sting to the same depth. He thought as he fell asleep of Blanche and Cloom. Life had ugly, unthought-of things in it, but, thinking of her steady radiance, he could not believe that any fate would dare to dim its lustre. Blanche sat long at the window of her bedroom that evening, her ashen fair hair about her shoulders and her brush idle in her hand. As it was Sunday and she had no engagement, she was going to bed early, so early that it was still sunset-light. She stood at the open window of the bedroom, staring with unseeing eyes; her thoughts were revolving round her own problems, but gradually the sights and sounds without won her to notice of them. The back windows of the house looked on to other house-backs that formed a square well, wherein smaller, much lower roofs and flat expanses of ribbed leads and stable yards all huddled together in soft blue shadow. Only an occasional chimney-pot, higher than its fellows, made a note of glowing orange where it pierced the slant of the evening sun: To Blanche's left there showed a pale gleam from the Thames between the house-backs of brownish-grey brick; to her right roof-tops and fantastic cowls were patterned in a flat purple tone against the luminous sky. In the eaves the sparrows were chirping shrilly; one flew downwards so swiftly between Blanche's eyes and the sky that his little body seemed nothing but a dark blot with a flickering upon either side of it. The sight caught at her memory, and she had a quick vision of a day when she had lain upon a sloping cliff and watched the gulls wheel far above her, the light of the setting sun making their breasts and the underneath of their wings flash like silver. A smaller bird had darted past, and then, as now, she had noted the curious effect of the solid little body flanked by that flickering which meant wings invisible through their own speed. The surface of her mind was quick to respond to suggestion, and the thought of the country struck her as being an answer to the unspoken questionings that were pricking at her. The West--the land of ready sleep and sweet dreams. So Ishmael had told her, and the way lay open if she chose to take it, a way that would not necessarily commit her to anything.