This stillness creeping out from the corners of the room was the opening of a lifetime of loneliness. It would grow to be far more dreadful than it was tonight. Tonight it was alive, between the jolly afternoon with the Lintoffs--_jolly_; the last bit of shared life--and the agony of tomorrow's break with Michael. But a day would come when the silence would be untormented, absolute, for life; echoing to all her movements in the room; waiting to settle as soon as she was still. She resisted, pitting against it the sound of London. But in the distant voice there was a new note; careless dismissal. The busy sound seemed very far away; like an echo of itself. She moved quickly at the first sinking of her heart, and drew in her eyes from watching her room, the way its features stood aloof, separate and individual; independent of her presence. In a moment panic would have seized her, leaving no refuge. She asserted herself, involuntarily whistling under her breath, a cheerful sound that called across the night to the mistaken voice of London and blended at once with its song.... She would tell Michael he must communicate with her in any dire necessity.... Moving about unseeing she broke up the shape of her room and blurred its features and waited, holding on. Attention to these wise outside threats would drive away something coming confidently towards her, just round the corner of this vast, breathless moment.... She paused to wait for it as for a person about to speak aloud in the room, and drew a deep breath sending through her a glow from head to foot ... it was there; independent, laughing, bubbling up incorrigibly, golden and bright with a radiance that spread all round her; her _profanity_ ... but if incurable profanity was incurable happiness, how could she help believing and trusting it against all other voices ... if the last deepest level of her being was joy ... a hilarity against which _nothing_ seemed to be able to prevail ... able, in spite of herself, in spite of her many solemn eager expeditions in opposition to it, to be always there, not gone; always waiting behind the last door. It was simply _rum_. Her limbs stirred to a dance ... how _slowly_ he had played that wild Norwegian tune; making it like an old woman singing to a fretful child to cheat it into comfort; a gay quavering.