still more bitter knowledge: "George
does not want me; I'm no good to him!"

Her heart, seeking consolation, went back again and again to the time
when he had wanted her; but it was far to go, to the days of holland
suits, when all those things that he desired--slices of pineapple,
Benson's old carriage-whip, the daily reading out of "Tom Brown's
School-days," the rub with Elliman when he sprained his little ankle, the
tuck-up in bed--were in her power alone to give.

This night she saw with fatal clearness that since he went to school he
had never wanted her at all. She had tried so many years to believe that
he did, till it had become part of her life, as it was part of her life
to say her prayers night and morning; and now she found it was all
pretence. But, lying awake, she still tried to believe it, because to
that she had been bound when she brought him, firstborn, into the world.
Her other son, her daughters, she loved them too, but it was not the same
thing, quite; she had never wanted them to want her, because that part of
her had been given once for all to George.

The street noises died down at last; she had slept two hours when they
began again. She lay listening. And the noises and her thoughts became
tangled in her exhausted brain--one great web of weariness, a feeling
that it was all senseless and unnecessary, the emanation of
cross-purposes and cross-grainedness, the negation of that gentle
moderation, her own most sacred instinct. And an early wasp, attracted
by the sweet perfumes of her dressing-table, roused himself from the
corner where he had spent the night, and began to hum and hover over the
bed. Mrs. Pendyce was a little afraid of wasps, so, taking a moment when
he was otherwise engaged, she stole out, and fanned him with her
nightdress-case till, perceiving her to be a lady, he went away. Lying
down again, she thought: 'People will worry them until they sting, and
then kill them; it's so unreasonable,' not knowing that she was putting
all her thoughts on suffering in a single nutshell.

She breakfasted upstairs, unsolaced by any news from George. Then with
no definite hope, but a sort of inner certainty, she formed the
resolution to call on Mrs. Bellew. She determined, however, first to
visit Mr. Paramor, and, having but a hazy notion of the hour when men
begin to work, she did not dare to start till past eleven, and told her
cabman to drive her slowly. He drove her, therefore, fas