It was only when she was alone and in the intervals of quiet reading that she came into possession of her hands. With others they oppressed her by their size and their lack of feminine expressiveness. No one could fall in love with such hands. Loving her, someone might come to tolerate them. They were utterly unlike Eve’s plump, white, inflexible little palms. But they were her strength. They came between her and the world of women. They would be her companions until the end. They would wither. But the bones would not change. The bones would be laid unchanged and wise, in her grave. 7 She began her readings with Rosa Nouchette Carey. Reading her at home, after tea by the breakfast-room fireside with red curtains drawn and the wind busy outside amongst the evergreen shrubs under the window, it had seemed quite possible that life might suddenly develop into the thing the writer described. From somewhere would come an adoring man who believed in heaven and eternal life. One would grow very good; and after the excitement and interest had worn off one would go on, with firm happy lips being good and going to church and making happy matches for other girls or quietly disapproving of everybody who did not believe just in the same way and think about good girls and happy marriages and heaven, keeping such people outside. Smiling, wise and happy inside in the warm; growing older, but that did not matter because the adored man was growing older too. Now it had all changed. The quiet house and fireside, gravity, responsibility, a greying husband, his reading profile always dear, both of them going on towards heaven, “all tears wiped away,” tears and laughter of relief after death, still seemed desirable, but “women.” ... Those awful, awful women, she murmured to herself stirring in bed. I never thought of all the _awful_ women there would be in such a life. I only thought of myself and the house and the garden and the man. What an escape! Good God in heaven, what an escape! Far better to be alone and suffering and miserable here in the school, alive.... Then there’ll be whole heaps of books, millions of books I can’t read--perhaps nearly all the books. She took one more volume of Rosa, in hope, and haunted its deeps of domesticity. “I’ve gone too far.” ... If Rosa Nouchette Carey knew me, she’d make me one of the bad characters who are turned out of the happy homes. I’m some sort of bad unsimple woman. Oh, damn, damn, she sighed. I don’t know. Her hands seemed to mock her, barring her way. 8