,
not merely by its force, as usual, but as something in the nature of a
menace.

"You're working?" said Katharine, with hesitation, perceiving that she
was not welcome.

"Nothing that matters," Mary replied, drawing forward the best of the
chairs and poking the fire.

"I didn't know you had to work after you had left the office," said
Katharine, in a tone which gave the impression that she was thinking of
something else, as was, indeed, the case.

She had been paying calls with her mother, and in between the calls Mrs.
Hilbery had rushed into shops and bought pillow-cases and blotting-books
on no perceptible method for the furnishing of Katharine's house.
Katharine had a sense of impedimenta accumulating on all sides of her.
She had left her at length, and had come on to keep an engagement to
dine with Rodney at his rooms. But she did not mean to get to him before
seven o'clock, and so had plenty of time to walk all the way from Bond
Street to the Temple if she wished it. The flow of faces streaming
on either side of her had hypnotized her into a mood of profound
despondency, to which her expectation of an evening alone with Rodney
contributed. They were very good friends again, better friends, they
both said, than ever before. So far as she was concerned this was true.
There were many more things in him than she had guessed until emotion
brought them forth--strength, affection, sympathy. And she thought of
them and looked at the faces passing, and thought how much alike they
were, and how distant, nobody feeling anything as she felt nothing, and
distance, she thought, lay inevitably between the closest, and their
intimacy was the worst presence of all. For, "Oh dear," she thought,
looking into a tobacconist's window, "I don't care for any of them, and
I don't care for William, and people say this is the thing that matters
most, and I can't see what they mean by it."

She looked desperately at the smooth-bowled pipes, and wondered--should
she walk on by the Strand or by the Embankment? It was not a simple
question, for it concerned not different streets so much as different
streams of thought. If she went by the Strand she would force herself
to think out the problem of the future, or some mathematical problem;
if she went by the river she would certainly begin to think about things
that didn't exist--the forest, the ocean beach, the leafy solitudes,
the magnanimous hero. No, no, no! A thousand times no!--it woul