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very different complexion.
    However, a distinction should be drawn between Maria and Sarah simply walking together, and Maria and Sarah walking together and, simultaneously, talking. The latter was a very different process and offered pleasure of a less unalloyed sort, although of course if they recognized this, and it is by no means certain that they did, it did not stop them from talking to each other, for people always want to talk to each other, even friends, for some reason. When Maria and Sarah walked they did so, needless to say, arm in arm, their bodies pressed gently together, whether it was cold or not, but especially if it was cold. This enabled them to regard their separation, their involuntary and inevitable separation, from the rest of the world, from the park, from the trees, above all from the other walkers, not with unease but with joy, for what did it matter, while they were together, while they were close? It only heightened their closeness, it only meant that they felt their togetherness more keenly. Through the contact of their bodies, or rather their coats, through the linking of their arms, or rather their sleeves, they moulded into one another, they blended as one. But their voices, when they spoke, rarely had the same effect. The soul, assuming that such a thing exists, seeks to find expression in various ways, none of which are terribly satisfactory: in silences, in looks (Charlotte would have agreed with all this), in sounds, but above all in words. Maria and Sarah talked, therefore, as friends do, with a view to achieving a touching and entwining of souls, just as their bodies, when they walked, touched and entwined. But it very rarely came off, it has to be admitted. This is not to say that they ever disagreed, or quarrelled, or misunderstood each other, or at least not very often. But whether it was because words are tricky little bastards, and very rarely say what you want them to say, or because Maria’s and Sarah’s souls were not cut out for each other in the way that their bodies were (for most people’s bodies are cut out for most other people’s bodies, when it comes to the crunch), they never felt, when they talked together, as close as when they walked together and did not talk together. Yet still, as I said before, this did not prevent them from talking together, or indeed from doing so with enjoyment, of a sort.
    Picture if you can a day in late autumn, or early winter, if you prefer. It is early evening, or late afternoon, if you’d rather. In a distant corner of the park, nearest to Maria’s college, there is an ornamental pond, made up of lilies, and reeds, and algae, and of course water, a nice enough mess in all. This was where, and this was when, Maria and Sarah most liked to walk, and sit, and talk.
    ‘You alarm me, Maria,’ Sarah said, on one such occasion.
    Maria smiled fondly. ‘Why?’
    ‘Because nothing excites you. Nothing amuses you. Nothing moves you.’
    ‘That’s not true.’
    ‘Sometimes I think you’re unhappy.’
    ‘Sometimes I am unhappy. But not now. I’m no more unhappy than you, or than any other girl, really.’
    ‘Do you know who I feel sorry for?’ Sarah asked. ‘Any man who falls in love with you.’
    Maria laughed. ‘Men don’t know what love is.’
    ‘Neither do you, Maria. You’ve never been in love, have you?’
    ‘I know what love isn’t. It’s none of the things people tell us it is.’ Then it occurred to her to ask, ‘Why, have you been in love?’
    ‘I think so.’
    ‘Tell me about love.’
    Sarah said nothing at first. ‘I can’t tell you. It can’t be described.’
    ‘Does it hurt?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Is it worth it?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How does it hurt?’
    ‘You feel very empty and confused. Like trying to catch the wind, in a butterfly net. For the first time in your life you know exactly what you want. You spend every day looking for it. Then it comes, for an instant, and then it’s gone. Then it comes again.