REVOLVING LIGHTS THE WORK OF DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON "In the ordinary novel, the novelist stands on the banks of the river of life chronicling how and when people arise, and how it is that things happen to them. But Miriam (the central figure of Dorothy Richardson's work) pulls us with her into the yielding water."--_Nation._ "The style grows upon one with familiarity; it is continually illumined by passages of brilliant insight, and its half-subconscious revelation of personality is wonderfully attractive."--_Daily Telegraph._ POINTED ROOFS BACKWATER HONEYCOMB THE TUNNEL INTERIM DEADLOCK REVOLVING LIGHTS DUCKWORTH & CO. 3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C. REVOLVING LIGHTS BY DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON LONDON: DUCKWORTH & CO. 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN First published in 1923. All rights reserved. _Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_ To F. E. W. REVOLVING LIGHTS CHAPTER I The building of the large hall had been brought about by people who gave no thought to the wonder of moving from one space to another and up and down stairs. Yet this wonder was more to them than all the things on which their thoughts were fixed. If they would take time to realise it. No one takes time. No one knows it.... But I know it.... These seconds of knowing, of being told, afresh, by things speaking silently, make up for the pain of failing to find out what I ought to be doing.... Away behind, in the flatly echoing hall, was the busy planning world of socialism, intent on the poor. Far away in to-morrow, stood the established, unchanging world of Wimpole Street, linked helpfully to the lives of the prosperous classes. Just ahead, at the end of the walk home, the small isolated Tansley Street world, full of secretive people drifting about on the edge of catastrophe, that would leave, when it engulfed them, no ripple on the surface of the tide of London life. In the space between these surrounding worlds was the everlasting solitude; ringing as she moved to cross the landing, with voices demanding an explanation of her presence in any one of them. "Now _that_," she quoted, to counter the foremost attack, "is a man who can be trusted to say what he thinks."