The torment grew as the August weeks passed. There were strange interesting things unexpectedly everywhere. Streets of great shuttered houses, their window boxes flowerless, all grey cool and quiet and untroubled on a day of cool rain; the restaurants were no longer crowded; torturing thought ranged there unsupported, goaded to madness, just a mad feverish swirling in the head, ranging out, driven back by the vacant eyes of little groups of people from the country. Unfamiliar people appeared in the parks and streets talking and staring eagerly about, women in felt boat-shaped hats trimmed with plaid ribbons--Americans. They looked clever--and ignorant of worrying thoughts. Men carried their parcels. But it was just the same. It was impossible to imagine these dried, yellow-faced women with babies. But if they liked all the fuss and noise and talk as much as they seemed to do.... If they did _not_, what were they doing? What was everybody _doing_? So busily. 5 Sleeplessness and every day a worse feeling of illness. Every day the new torture. Every night the dreaming and tossing in the fierce, stifling, dusty heat, the awful waking, to know that presently the unbearable human sounds would begin again; the torment of walking through the streets the solitary torment of leisure to read again in the stillness of the office; the moments of hope of finding a fresh meaning; hope of having misread. 6 There was nothing to turn to. Books were poisoned. Art. All the achievements of men were poisoned at the root. The beauty of nature was tricky femininity. The animal world was cruelty. Humanity was based on cruelty. Jests and amusements were tragic distractions from tragedy. Religion was the only hope. But even there there was no hope for women. No future life could heal the degradation of having been a woman. Religion in the world had nothing but insults for women. Christ was a man. If it was true that he was God taking on humanity--he took on _male_ humanity ... and the people who explained him, St. Paul and the priests, the Anglicans and the non-Conformists it was the same story everywhere. Even if religion could answer science and prove it wrong there was no hope, for women. And no intelligent person can prove science wrong. Life is poisoned, for women, at the very source. Science is true and will find out more and more and things will grow more and more horrible. Space is full of dead worlds. The world is cooling and dying. Then why not stop _now_? 7