Opposition would be futile. Her words would fly like chaff before the wind of their large bitterness, a general arraignment, she gathered, growing used to the angry sing-song, of everything in the world. She thought of the autumn sunlight, held it in her mind, thought of it as existing in their minds and in the minds of everyone in London to-day; the hint of an answer, the moment one paused to look at it, to every problem in the world. But these two were not perceiving the sunlight in her mind. Aware of her submissive attention, they were growing more explicit, going into detail, one against the other, cantori and decani. Mother and son, bitterness embodied, thought out, added to, grown old behind a close hedge of contempt for everything _new_. They had a sort of clear-sighted observation. Humanity, they would say if they had the words, doesn’t change _essentially_. But to get anywhere with that conviction they ought to be religious. To be in a group. They were cut off from the religion that goes with the attitude. An amateur church, self-ended. They were the offshoots of the worst kind of Protestantism. Protestant enlightenment in a vacuum.... Sadness grew in her with the sense of the utter absence in herself of anything wherewith to stem the bitter flood. The refuge she was taking in apparent acceptance was a condemnation. Leaving her less than they. When at last the rent was paid and she was free to go, such a length of life had been passed in the sad room, so much unfamiliar experience lived through, that the parting was like a parting with old friends. Unawares, she found herself voicing regret for her forced departure and promising to come again. She felt her future divided between the two houses set so closely side by side. They smiled, pleased. Stood close, flattering and fondling her with their voices. They had had a happy hour. The old woman came to the top of the stairs to speed her on her way. Standing on the landing with escape at hand, she had a moment of hesitation. Voicelessly she cancelled her compliance, stood free and remote and felt as she went how their scorn followed her, scorn of anything that could not ring against their hardness any hardness of its own. Outside in the court, she paced to-and-fro between her door and the entrance to the main street, waiting in the free air of her own world for the coming of her friends. But no oblivion could draw out the bitterness folded into her memory. And though the voices of the friends would drown the sound of that murderous chanting, the thing behind it, the thing she had recognised in Sheffield a week ago was something ultimate. Inexorable; a flourishing part of the world’s life not hitherto clearly known to her, all the time taking effect in the sum total. Life being hated, seen only as material for bitter laughter.