Why did men always have more freedom?... His head had a listening look. His eyes were waiting desperately, seeing nothing of the things in the world ... he wanted to stay still until the voice of things grew so clear and near that one could give a great cry and fall dead ... a long long cry.... Your hot heart, all of you, pouring out, getting free. Perhaps that happened to people when they were happy. They cried out to each other and were free--lost in another person. Whoso would save his soul ... but then they grew strange and apart.... Marriage was a sort of inferior condition ... an imitation of something else.... Ho-o-zan-na-in-the-Hi...i...est ... the top note rang up and stayed right up, in the rafters of the church. “Did you ever notice how white the insides of your wrists are?” Why did Bob seem so serious?... What a bother, what a bother. It is a good thing to be plain ... “the tragedy of beauty; woman’s greatest curse.” ... Andromeda on a rock with her hair blowing over her face.... She was afraid to look at the monster coming out of the sea. If she had looked at it, it would not have dared to come near her. Because Perseus looked and rescued her, she would have to be grateful to him all her life and smile and be Mrs. Perseus. One day they would quarrel and he would never think her beautiful again.... Adam had not faced the devil. He was stupid first, and afterwards a coward and a cad ... “the divine curiosity of Eve....” Some person had said that.... Perhaps men would turn round one day and see, what they were like. Eve had not been unkind to the devil; only Adam and God. All the men in the world, and their God, ought to apologise to women.... To hold back and keep free ... and real. Impossible to be real unless you were quite free.... Two married in one family was enough. Eve would marry, too. But money. The chair-bed creaked as she knelt up and turned out the gas. “I love you” ... just a quiet manly voice ... perhaps one would forget everything, all the horrors and mysteries ... because there would be somewhere then always to be, to rest, and feel sure. If only ... just to sit hand in hand ... watching snowflakes ... to sit in the lamplight, quite quiet. Pictures came in the darkness ... lamplit rooms, gardens, a presence, understanding. 12 Voices were sounding in the next room. Something being argued. A voice level and reassuring; going up now and again into a hateful amused falsetto. Miriam refused to listen. She had never been so near before. Of course they talked in their room. They had talked all their lives; an endless conversation; he laying down the law ... no end to it ... the movement of his beard as he spoke, the red lips shining through the fair moustache ... splash baths and no soap; soap is not a cleansing agent ... he had a ruddy skin ... healthy. A tearful, uncertain voice....