Lydia brought the brood into the shop; it gave her a strange pang to see them cross her threshold, succeeded by an exaltation to have got them safely there. She did not talk much; she let them do the talking while she surveyed them. Bertie was voluble; he had a lot of information to give her, mixed in with small outbursts of sentimentality. He had grown portly, and he was most anxious to conciliate her; she took the measure of Bertie in a moment. The others, clearly, were in his charge. His wife, as ever, watched him for her cues with little twinkling, admiring eyes. Emily produced a sour and unconvincing smile whenever Lydia’s eyes rested on her. As for Fred, he smiled nervously the whole time, and looked as though he felt himself very much of a stranger. X She had got them all into their rooms for the night. She relished the feeling that she had got them all safely shut in, and as she stood at the top of the stairs looking first to left and then to right along the dim passage, she felt the jailer of all those four people behind the closed doors. She would have liked a bunch of keys dangling from her belt. Squeezing her hands tightly together, she swayed backwards and forwards as she controlled her laughter. A single gas-jet, turned low, lit the passage. She wandered away. She wandered down into the shop, where the polished shields on the walls threw back the sharp flame of her candle, and the indistinct, peopled obscurity of the shop. She thought vaguely that the shop was too full—had always been too full—she must have a clearance—but there was no longer any room upstairs—she ought to scrap half her things—but no, they were too precious. She wandered away again, up into the attic. She peered round, thrusting the candle into the dark corners. A rat scurried past. Old trunks, too full to shut; velvet and damask and leather protruded; too full. Like life; too full. Like her head; too full. She wandered back to the dim passage. Closed doors. The gas-jet. She could turn off the gas at the main; that would put the house in darkness. They would not understand what had happened. They would run out of their rooms, and up and down the house, looking for light; finding none; blundering against objects in the dark. She would hear their footsteps, running; their hands, perhaps, beating at last upon the shutters. She had seen clearly enough that they already thought her strange. She had accompanied Bertie and his wife to their rooms, and under her scrutiny they had continued their talk; they had drawn a picture of the social life in their town; they had spoken of nice little parties. “Not so nice as the little party I’m giving now,” Lydia had cried, and left them.