But even after she had begun to search, it was some time before she could find it. Her mind which, unknown to herself, she had left behind her in the House of Dreams, refused at first to visualise any other. Already it had imprinted upon itself every inch of the rooms, so that she might have inhabited them for many years. Now her eyes, resting again upon objects which, only that morning, had been more familiar to her than her face, roamed over and round them with a puzzled expression. She had seen them so long that she had learned not to see them, and now out of them beheld fresh colours suddenly springing, new contours suddenly taking shape. There was a cupboard somewhere, said her unwillingly shifted mind, anxious to hurry away again to its happy place. She could almost feel it straining away from her like a separate thing, leaning and tugging against its leash. The cupboard was in the passage, said the impatient mind, and was firmly brought back to admit that there was no passage. It was up at the House of Dreams that there was a passage, a little hall; here there was only a cupboard under the stairs. Her eyes, focussing themselves at last, found the door to the narrow hole where coal was kept, and the broom, a broken hamper, a broken chair.... Her mind gave up the struggle when she remembered the chair, bringing itself back definitely from the House of Dreams. The wrench was so fierce that for the moment it seemed almost physical; an actual body seemed to be torn away. But as soon as it was done she saw the cottage as usual, knowing it to be hers, and letting it slide back into that place where she neither consciously saw nor thought of it at all. Limping, she went direct to the dark cupboard, and, groping with accustomed hands, found and brought forth the little chair. Lifting it in her arms as if it had been the child to whom it had once belonged, she set it upon the hearth; and from that far place where the great wave of it had been held back until the signal was given, her grief broke over her, swamping her, stamping her down—rolling her, choking her, but always sweeping her on, casting her up at length on that grey beach of total exhaustion where sorrow gives up at last its simulated dead....