h in the gardens of Lincoln's Inn
Fields; she had spent the whole of a committee meeting in thinking about
sparrows and colors, until, almost at the end of the meeting, her old
convictions had all come back to her. But they had only come back, she
thought with scorn at her feebleness, because she wanted to use them to
fight against Ralph. They weren't, rightly speaking, convictions at all.
She could not see the world divided into separate compartments of good
people and bad people, any more than she could believe so implicitly in
the rightness of her own thought as to wish to bring the population
of the British Isles into agreement with it. She looked at the
lemon-colored leaflet, and thought almost enviously of the faith which
could find comfort in the issue of such documents; for herself she would
be content to remain silent for ever if a share of personal happiness
were granted her. She read Mr. Clacton's statement with a curious
division of judgment, noting its weak and pompous verbosity on the one
hand, and, at the same time, feeling that faith, faith in an illusion,
perhaps, but, at any rate, faith in something, was of all gifts the most
to be envied. An illusion it was, no doubt. She looked curiously round
her at the furniture of the office, at the machinery in which she
had taken so much pride, and marveled to think that once the
copying-presses, the card-index, the files of documents, had all been
shrouded, wrapped in some mist which gave them a unity and a general
dignity and purpose independently of their separate significance.
The ugly cumbersomeness of the furniture alone impressed her now. Her
attitude had become very lax and despondent when the typewriter stopped
in the next room. Mary immediately drew up to the table, laid hands on
an unopened envelope, and adopted an expression which might hide her
state of mind from Mrs. Seal. Some instinct of decency required that she
should not allow Mrs. Seal to see her face. Shading her eyes with her
fingers, she watched Mrs. Seal pull out one drawer after another in her
search for some envelope or leaflet. She was tempted to drop her fingers
and exclaim:

"Do sit down, Sally, and tell me how you manage it--how you manage, that
is, to bustle about with perfect confidence in the necessity of your
own activities, which to me seem as futile as the buzzing of a belated
blue-bottle." She said nothing of the kind, however, and the presence of
industry which she preserved