THE WINDOWdid not know. She did not mind. She could not un-derstand how she had ever felt any emotion or anyaffection for him. She had a sense of being past every-thing, through everything, out of everything, as shehelped the soup, as if there was an eddy — there —and one could be in it, or one could be out of it, andshe was out of it. It’s all come to an end, she thought,while they came in one after another, Charles Tans-ley — 'Sit there, please,’ she said — Augustus Car-michael — and sat down. And meanwhile she waited,passively, for someone to answer her, for somethingto happen. But this is not a thing, she thought, ladlingout soup, that one says.

Raising her eyebrows at the discrepancy — that waswhat she was thinking, this was what she was doing

— ladling out soup — she felt, more and more strong-ly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had fallen, and,robbed of colour, she saw things truly. The room (shelooked round it) was very shabby. There was no beautyanywhere. She forbore to look at Mr. Tansley. No-thing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate.And the whole of the effort of merging and flowingand creating rested on her. Again she felt, as a factwithout hostility, the sterility of men, for if she didnot do it nobody would do it, and so, giving herselfthe little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped,the old familiar pulse began beating, as the watchbegins ticking — one, two, three, one, two, three. Andso on and so on, she repeated, listening to it, shelter-ing and fostering the still feeble pulse as one mightguard a weak flame with a newspaper. And so then,she concluded, addressing herself by bending silentlyin his direction to William Bankes — poor man! who99
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