The gold was fading, a soft mistiness spreading through the deepening rose, making the leafage darker and more opaque. Presently the sky would be mother-of-pearl above a soft dark mass and then pure evening grey outlining the dark feathery tree tops of a London square turning to green below in the lamplight, sinking to sleep, deeply breathing out its freshness to meet the freshness pouring through the streets from the neighbouring squares. Freshness would steal over the outside walls of the houses already cool within. Only in the garrets would the sultry day remain under the slowly cooling roofs. * * * * * There was still a pale light flowing into the dusk of the garret. It must be only about nine o'clock ... the gas flared out making a winter brilliance ... Four sermons on Dante.... Kuenen's Life of Dante ... Gemma Donati, _Gemma_, busily making puddings in the world lit by the light of the Mystic Rose; swept away by the rush of words ... a stout Italian woman ... _Gem_ma; Bayatrichay ... they were bound to reach music ... a silent Italian woman in a hot kitchen scolding, left out of the mystic rose ... Lourdes ... Le Nabab ... atroce comédie de bonheur conjugale sans relâche ... the Frenchman _expressing_ what the Englishman only thinks ... "the wife" ... I met my WIFE! ... red nose and check trousers, smoky self-indulgent married man, all the self-indulgent married men in the audience guffawing ... "You must be ready to face being taken for granted, you must hide your troubles, learn to say nothing of your unnoticed exhausting toil, wear a smile above the heart that you believe is breaking; stand steady in face of the shipwreck of all your dreams. Remember that although he does not know it, in spite of all his apparent oblivion and neglect, if you _fail_, his universe _crumbles_" ... men live their childish ignorant lives on a foundation of pain and exhaustion. Down in the fevered life of pain and exhaustion there is a deep certainty. There is no deep certainty in the lives of men. If there were they would not be forever talking with conceited guilty lips as if something were waiting if they stopped, to spring on them from behind.... The evolution of the Idea of God.... I have forgotten what that is about ... a picture of a sort of Madonna ... _corn_ goddess, with a child and sheaves of corn.... The Mechanism of Thought.... Thirty Sane Criticisms.... Critique de la Pensée Moderne; traduit par H. Navray, Mercure de France.... How did he begin? Where was he when he came out and began saying everybody was wrong? How did he get to know about it all? She took down a volume unwillingly ... there was something being lost, something waiting within the quiet air of the room that would be gone if she read. It was not too late. Why did men write books? Modern men? The book was open. Her eyes scanned unwillingly. Fabric. How did he find his words. No one had ever said _fabric_ about anything.