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There would be scenes. She would get so tired, and she had to start rehearsing tomorrow. Again she felt as if she were a rat in a trap. There floated before her once more the images of the vast flushed fallen torso, of Marty, of Francis Pitt, of the hideous and beloved girl, but this time they did not make any meaning of happiness. They had of course no meaning, they could not, for they had no connection with each other. Yet somehow life was not bearable unless they were connected, unless they had a meaning. She tried to steady herself by thinking of the ugly girl, for whom at any rate all was well. Yet was even that certain? For Essington had been very good to her when first they were together. It was not till after two or three years that he had made a scourge of his love. She might come back to this yard in some future spring and find nothing fair but the sunshine and the lilac, sourness on the face of the little man and the only thing that mattered gone out of the place. As it had gone …
    She did not know what to think. She did not know what to think and be able to go on living. She looked wildly round her and became aware again of the four detestable people who were still standing there lechering with their minds upon her body. There came on her an impulse to throw her arms above her head and shout at them every ugly word she knew, meeting them on their own vile ground and bludgeoning them with her extreme brutality. The world was changing her, spoiling her.
    She leaned forward to the little man and said, ‘These people keep on staring at me! I can’t stand it!’
    Again she was obliged to be artificial with this person who had made her so greatly desire to be honest. But she did not mind so much now that she had begun to doubt if he would always think the ugly girl beautiful. So she gave him a consciously exquisite, benignant, and confidential smile, raised her finger to her lips with a gesture that she knew he would enjoy recognising as one she had used in ‘As You Like It’, and hastened out into the street.
    When she had thought of the pond with lilies she could not see it, and no idea was any use to her unless she could see it as a picture. She no longer wanted to go there, and even if she had still wanted to she could not have managed the walk, for she felt spent as she did after a scene with Essington. There was something frightening in the way that though nothing had really happened to her during the last twenty minutes, except that four people had stared at her and another had said things that did not particularly matter, she seemed to have been standing up to an enemy, disputing with him, crying out to friends who did not hear, escaping sometimes to safety, but at the last falling under blows. It was as if the situation Essington had created had been given actual separate life by the power of his genius so that it could torment her even in his absence. But here she was, thinking bitterly about him, and that was wrong, for he was a great man, and often so sweet and kind and dependent on her. Nowadays her thoughts were terribly apt to go sour if she let them settle for a moment. Since everything was really all right, and she was of course quite happy, this was ridiculous. She must find something to do in this little town during the hour or so it was going to take to put the car in order, which would not let her think. Across the road there was a picture theatre, which might or might not be open. She went over to investigate, but stopped before she got to the other kerb because she saw that the posters which had looked so attractive advertised one of her own films.
    ‘What’s the good of a person going to a film theatre to forget themself if all there is for them to see is themself?’ asked Sunflower almost weeping.
    She turned round to go back to the other pavement, but saw that her four tormenters had come out of the garage and were standing about to watch where she was going so that they could follow