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herself in. ‘But
long
letters, that take no time to write, about engagements and arrangements, and where he ate his meals, dull letters, none of the famous notes, so gay and so teasing, so hastily scribbled off in about three hours of steady concentration and the help of the
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
. No, none of those ever again to me. But how can he help himself? He has to be like that, always passing on to someone new, and no harm done, he believes. Nothing done. And nothing ever lasting. No one in his life goes back very far, nor has any likelihood of going any distance into the future. But we won’t talk about him any more. What I mean is, he hasn’t anyone to say “do you remember” to. I never have heard him say those words. Not as we do. And when he thinks of the future, he thinks of
next week always
. Not tomorrow, nor next year, never of when he will be old, or of Harry growing up; but just next week, when things should at last be coming round the way he wants them.He also loves titled women,’ she said suddenly and turned off the light.
    She had propped the door open with two books, so that she could hear the baby if he should cry. Everywhere about the room, books supported or balanced the furniture, compensated for the uneven floor, wedging mirrors, steadying the dressing-table. Sometimes, Liz and Camilla eased them out of their places and read them – old memoirs, guide-books, poor, faded novels. Through the open door they heard Frances come up to bed.
    ‘In the old days, she used to knock on the wall, to make us stop talking,’ Liz said.
    ‘Why did we talk so long? What was it all about?’
    ‘We used to give those tea-parties for English literary ladies.’
    ‘Yes, of course. And very disintegrating they were! Everything went wrong.’
    ‘We planned them so far ahead, in so much detail, and then talked of them for so long afterwards.’
    ‘I think it was Charlotte who wrecked them, with her inverted snobbery. The time she told Ivy how much she gave for her lace shawl in Bradford.’
    ‘And said it was her best.’
    ‘Anne looked down into her lap. I saw her hands tremble.’
    ‘Virginia saw, too.’
    ‘Charlotte came too early, anyhow. Before we had time to put a match to the parlour fire.’
    ‘Emily wouldn’t corne in at all. She stood up the road and eyed the gate.’
    ‘Jane and Ivy came on time. They arrived at the door together and waited there, looking at one anothers’ shoes.’
    ‘And Virginia was late, and little Katie never came at all.’
    ‘She got lost. Who fetched her in the end? Emily, I mean.’
    ‘I think we sent George Eliot out for her.’
    ‘But she wouldn’t co-operate. She wouldn’t sit down. She ruined the party with her standing up.’
    ‘I felt Virginia was thinking: “They only give me such cakes as these because they are women, and I am a woman.”‘
    And Elizabeth Barrett taking up all the room on the sofa!’
    ‘Her hand going up all the time to her curls reminded me of Captain Hook. I was always surprised to see it
was
a hand.’
    ‘Virginia was right to feel wounded about the food. Women are not good enough to themselves. And the indifferent food is the beginning of all the other indifferent things they take for granted,’ Liz said. And the literary party was dissolved and forgotten and she was back again with her husband.
    ‘That man in the Griffin,’ Camilla said presently. ‘I thought he described the place amusingly.’
    ‘I thought he seemed to be acting. He was as if he had learnt the words by heart first. They seemed not to belong to him, nor to match the look in his eyes.’
    ‘This flair you have for recognising the spurious, it is a pity you never put it to use in your own case.’
    Liz said wistfully: ‘I thought for a few seconds that it was going to be like other years.’
    ‘It won’t be again.’
    ‘My opinions about that wretched man – why should they annoy you? How could you care? And if you did, why, you say