TIME PASSESthat as she lurched, dusting, wiping, she seemedto say how it was one long sorrow and trouble,how it was getting up and going to bed again,and bringing things out and putting them awayagain. It was not easy or snug this world she hadknown for close on seventy years. Bowed downshe was with weariness. How long, she asked,creaking and groaning on her knees under thebed, dusting the boards, how long shall it endure?but hobbled to her feet again, pulled herself up,and again with her sidelong leer which slipped andturned aside even from her own face, and her ownsorrows, stood and gaped in the glass, aimlesslysmiling, and began again the old amble andhobble, taking up mats, putting down china,looking sideways in the glass, as if, after all, shehad her consolations, as if indeed there twinedabout her dirge some incorrigible hope. Visionsof joy there must have been at the wash-tub, saywith her children (yet two had been base-bornand one had deserted her), at the public-house,drinking; turning over scraps in her drawers.Some cleavage of the dark there must have been,some channel in the depths of obscurity throughwhich light enough issued to twist her face grin-ning in the glass and make her, turning to herjob again, mumble out the old music hall song.Meanwhile the mystic, the visionary, walked the203
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