"Why begin it at all, Jan?" "Well my dear little Miriam I think there is a good deal to be said for the sheltered life." "Yes----" Mag settled more deeply into her chair, burrowing with her shoulders and crossing her knees with a fling--"and if you don't begin it jolly early it's too late to begin it at all...." Then Mag meant to stay always as she was ... oh, good, good ... with several people interested in her ... what a curious worry her engagement must be ... irrelevant ... and with her ideas of loyalty. "Don't you think soh?" Irritating--why did she do it--what was it--not a provincialism--some kind of affectation as if she were on the stage. It sounded brisk and important--soh--as if her thoughts had gone on and she was making conversation with her lips. Why not let them and drop it ... there was something waiting, always something waiting just outside the nag of conversation. "I can't imagine anything more awful than what you call the sheltered life" said Miriam with a little pain in her forehead. Perhaps they would laugh and that would finish it and something would begin. "For us yes. Imagine either of us coming down to it in the morning; the regular breakfast table, the steaming coffee, the dashes of rishers ... dishers of rashes I mean, the eggs...." "You are alluding I presume to the beggs and acon." "Precisely. We should die." "Of boredom." "Imagine not being able to turn up on Sunday morning in your knickers with your hair down." "I love Sundays. That first cigarette over the _Referee_." "Is like nothing on earth." "Or in heaven." "Well, or in heaven." "The first cigarette anyhow, with or without the _Referee_. It's just pure absolute bliss that first bit of Sunday morning; complete well-being and happiness." "While the sheltered people are flushed with breakfast table-talk----" "Or awkward silences." "The deep damned silence of disillusionment." "And thinking about getting ready for church." "The men smoke." "Stealthily and sleepily in armchairs like cats--ever seen a cat smoke?--like cats--with the wife or somebody they are tired of talking to on the doormat--as it were--tentatively, I speak _ten_tatively ... in a dead-alley--Dedale--Dedalus--coming into the room any minute in Sunday clothes----" "To stand on the hearthrug." "No hanging about the room. If there's any hearthrug standing it's the men who do it, smoking blissfully alone, and trying to look weary and wise and important if anyone comes in." "Like Cabinet ministers?" "Yes; when they are really--er." "Cabinets." "Footstools; office stools; you never saw a sheltered woman venture on to the hearthrug except for a second if she's short-sighted to look at the clock." Miriam sprang to the hearthrug and waved her cigarette. "Con-fu-sion to the sheltered life!" The vast open of London swung, welcoming, before her eyes. "Hoch! Hoch!" "Banzai!" "We certainly have our compensations." "Com-pen-_sa_-tions?"