ravaged face strained and sheeny with fatigue and wearing an expression
of undaunted sweetness and patience. Children and housework and a
selfish husband and nothing in life of her own. She was at the disposal
of everyone for kind actions. She would be _really_ sympathetic and
shocked about an earthquake in China. Was that it? Was that being
_inside_? Was that all there was? The woman did not see the wonderful
gold brown light in the carriage; nor the beauty of the blackness
outside. In her brain was the pain and pressure of everything she had to
do. She was good and sweet; perfectly good and sweet. But there was
something irritating about her ... her obliviousness of everything but
"troubles," other people's as much as her own. Yet she would love a day
in the country. The fields and the flowers would make her cry. It was
her obliviousness that made one afraid of associating with her. Being in
conversation with her or in any way associated with her life there would
always be the dreadful imprisoned feeling of knowing she did not
_think_.... Her glance slid over the other seated forms and fell,
leaving her struggling between her desire to feel in loving union with
them and her inability to ignore the revelations pouring from their
bearing and shapes, their clothes and the way they held their
belongings. They were terrible and hateful because all their thoughts
were visible. The terrible maddening thing about them was the thoughts
they did not think. It made them worse than the woman because to get on
with them one would have to pretend to see life as they saw it. It would
be so easy and deceitful with each one alone, knowing exactly what line
to take. She wrenched herself back to her prayer ... instantly the
thought came that all these people far away in themselves wanted to be
more loving. She drew herself together and sat up staring out towards
the darkness. That was an answer again! A state of mind that came from
the state of prayer. But then one would need always to be in a state of
prayer. It would be very difficult. It would be almost impossible even
to remember it in the rush of life ... it would mean being a sort of
fool ... having no judgments or opinions. It would _spoil_ everything.
There would be no time for anything. Nothing beyond one's daily work and
all the rest of the time being all things to all men. It meant that now
at this moment one must give up the sense of the train going along in
the darkness and the sense of the dark streets waiting lamplit under the
dark sky and go out to the people in the carriage and then on to the
people at Tansley Street ... she thought of people she knew who did
this, appearing to see nothing in life but people, and recoiled.
_Places_ to them were nothing but people; there was something they
missed out that could not be given up. Something goes if you lose
yourself in humanity. You cannot find humanity by looking for God only
there. Making up your mind that God is to be found in humanity is