almost danced to the opposite pavement in this keenest, witnessed moment of her yearslong revel of escape. He would presently be returning to that other enclosed life to which, being a man, and dependent on comforts, he was fettered. Already in his mind was one of those formulas that echoed about in the enclosed life ... "Oui, ma chère, little Mirry _Henderson_, strolling, at midnight, across Piccadilly Circus." Suddenly it struck her that the life of men was pitiful. They hovered about the doors of freedom, returning sooner or later to the hearth, where even if they were autocrats they were not free; but passing guests, never fully initiated into the house-life, where the real active freedom of the women resided behind the noise and tumult of meetings. Man's life was bandied to and fro ... from _word_ to _word_. Hemmed in by women, fearing their silence, unable to enter its freedom--being himself made of words--cursing the torrents of careless speech with which its portals were defended. And all the time unselfconscious thoughtless little men, with neat or shabby sets of unconsidered words for everything, busily bleating through cornets, blaring through trombones and euphoniums, thrumming undertones on double-basses. She summoned Harriett and shrieked with laughter at the cheerful din. It was cheerful, even in a funeral march. There would certainly be music in heaven; but not books. The shock of meeting Tommy had brought the grey of tomorrow morning into the gold-lit streets. There was a fresh breeze setting down Shaftesbury Avenue. Here, still on the Circus, was that little coffee-place. Tommy was going home. _She_ was rescuing the last scrap of a London evening here at the very centre and then going home, on foot, still well within the charmed circle. The spell of the meeting with Tommy broke as she went down the little flight of steps. Here was eternity, the backward vista indivisible, attended by throngs of irreconcilable interpretations. Years ago, a crisis of loneliness, this little doorway, a glimpse, from the top of the steps, of a counter and a Lockhart urn, a swift descent, unseen people about her, companions; misery left behind, another little sanctuary added to her list. The next time, coming coldly with Michael Shatov, in a unison of escape from everlasting conflict; people clearly visible, indifferent and hard; the moment of catching, as they sat down, the flicker of his mobile eyelid, the lively unveiled recognising glance he had flung at the opposite table, describing its occupants before she saw them; the rush of angry sympathy; a longing to _blind_ him; in some way to screen them from the intelligent unseeing glance of all the men in the world. "You don't _see_ them; they are not _there_ in what you see." "These types are generally quite rudimentary; there is no question of a soul there." "If you could only have seen your look; the most horrible look I have ever seen; _alive_ with interest."