"Oh, it's only what's the matter with every one!" she exclaimed. "No
one feels--no one does anything but hurt. I tell you, Helen, the world's
bad. It's an agony, living, wanting--"
Here she tore a handful of leaves from a bush and crushed them to
control herself.
"The lives of these people," she tried to explain, the aimlessness, the
way they live. "One goes from one to another, and it's all the same. One
never gets what one wants out of any of them."
Her emotional state and her confusion would have made her an easy prey
if Helen had wished to argue or had wished to draw confidences. But
instead of talking she fell into a profound silence as they walked on.
Aimless, trivial, meaningless, oh no--what she had seen at tea made it
impossible for her to believe that. The little jokes, the chatter, the
inanities of the afternoon had shrivelled up before her eyes. Underneath
the likings and spites, the comings together and partings, great things
were happening--terrible things, because they were so great. Her sense
of safety was shaken, as if beneath twigs and dead leaves she had seen
the movement of a snake. It seemed to her that a moment's respite
was allowed, a moment's make-believe, and then again the profound and
reasonless law asserted itself, moulding them all to its liking, making
and destroying.
She looked at Rachel walking beside her, still crushing the leaves in
her fingers and absorbed in her own thoughts.
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