ething; a noise, indeed, about so
much that she felt she must get out of earshot for a little or she
would be completely, and perhaps permanently, deafened. But suppose it
was only a noise about nothing?

She had not had a question like that in her mind before. It had
made her feel lonely. She wanted to be alone, but not lonely. That
was very different; that was something that ached and hurt dreadfully
right inside one. It was what one dreaded most. It was what made one
go to so many parties; and lately even the parties had seemed once or
twice not to be a perfectly certain protection. Was it possible that
loneliness had nothing to do with circumstances, but only with the way
one met them? Perhaps, she had thought, she had better go to bed. She
couldn't be very well.

She went to bed; and in the morning, after she had escaped the fly and
had her breakfast and got out again into the garden, there was this
same feeling again, and in broad daylight. Once more she had that
really rather disgusting suspicion that her life till now had not
only been loud but empty. Well, if that were so, and if her first
twenty-eight years--the best ones--had gone just in meaningless noise,
she had better stop a moment and look round her; pause, as they
said in tiresome novels, and consider. She hadn't got many sets of
twenty-eight years. One more would see her growing very like Mrs.
Fisher. Two more-- She averted her eyes.

Her mother would have been concerned if she had known. Her
mother doted. Her father would have been concerned too, for he also
doted. Everybody doted. And when, melodiously obstinate, she had
insisted on going off to entomb herself in Italy for a whole month with
queer people she had got out of an advertisement, refusing even to take
her maid, the only explanation her friends could imagine was that poor
Scrap--such was her name among them--had overdone it and was feeling a
little nervy.

Her mother had been distressed at her departure. It was such an
odd thing to do, such a sign of disappointment. She encouraged the
general idea of the verge of a nervous breakdown. If she could have
seen her adored Scrap, more delightful to look upon than any other
mother's daughter had ever yet been, the object of her utmost
pride, the source of all her fondest hopes, sitting staring at the
empty noonday Mediterranean considering her three possible sets of
twenty-eight years, she would have been miserable. To