12o ANGEL PAVEMENT

not enjoyed but endured. If she met a person two 01
three times, then she had met whole crowds of him or
her, day and night. Two matinees (with an old school
friend or her mother up from Worcester) coming within
one week reduced her to the condition of a dramatic
critic at the end of a heavy autumn season. Even when
she admitted that she had not attended a certain func-
tion, met a person, seen a play, read a book, she contrived
to give these confessions a positive instead of a negative
flavour, and so strong a positive flavour that somehow
she seemed to be in close contact with the function,
person, play, or book. She did this partly by throwing
the emphasis on the auxiliary verb: "No, I haven't seen
her," or: "No, I haven't seen it," which suggested to
the listener that Mrs. Dersingham had attended a series
of important committee meetings, had thrashed it out,
and had decided with the rest that there should be
nothing done about these people, these plays, these
books, just yet. Thus, by this and other methods, she
created an atmosphere in which a few outings and en-
counters were transformed into a rich and strenuous
social life, which, so strong are our dreams, frequently
left her genuinely fatigued. All this puz/led that simple
man, her husband, but he never said anything now,
The last time he had asked, after the company had gone,
why she had complained so much about having to rush
about, when he, for his part, could not see she had done
much rushing about, she had turned on him quite
fiercely and said that if it depended on him she would
be sitting moping in the flat, never seeing anybody or
anything, from one week's end to another, and that the
less he said the better; an answer that left him com-
pletely bewildered.