From the sunlit white facade of a large London house the laurels looked down through a white stone-pillared balustrade. They appeared coming suddenly with the light of a street lamp, clumped safely behind the railings of a Bloomsbury square ... the opening of a side street led her back into the maze of little roads. The protective presence of the little house was there and she sauntered happily along through channels of sheltered sunlit silence.... What was she doing here? At Christmas-time one should be where one belonged. Gathering and searching about her came the claims of the firesides that had lain open to her choice, drawing her back into the old life, the only life known to those who sat round them. They looked out from that life, seeing hers as hardship and gloom, pitying her, turning blind eyes unwillingly towards her attempts to unveil and make it known to them. She saw herself relinquishing efforts, putting on a desperate animation, professing interests and opinions and talking as people talk, while they watched her with eyes that saw nothing but a pitiful attempt to hide an awful fate, lonely poverty, the absence of any opening prospect, nothing ahead but a gloom deepening as the years counted themselves off. Those were the facts--as almost anyone might see them. They made those facts live; they tugged at the jungle of feelings that had the power to lead one back through any small crushing maiming aperture.... In their midst lived the past and the thing that had ended it and plunged it into a darkness that still held the threat of destroying reason and life. Perhaps only thus could it be faced. Perhaps only in that way. What other way was there? Forgetfulness blotted it out and let one live on. But it was always there, impossible, when one looked back.... The little house brought forgetfulness and rest. It made no break in the new life. The new life flowed through it, sunlit. It was a flight down strange vistas, a superfluity of wild strangeness, with a clue in one's hand, the door of retreat always open; rest and forgetfulness piling up within one into strength. 8