this. But when
she turned her eyes away from him in loathing she came on something far
worse in Poppy's florid and skull-like face. It would have been
appalling if she had been quite attentive, but she was dreamy, because
there was this picture forming in her consciousness which would explain
the danger to her.... Round Poppy's eyes and mouth there was playing a
thirsty look which she seemed to be trying to suppress, for she was
glancing about the room with an expression of prudence as if she were
reminding herself that not lightly must she run the risk of being
evicted from this comfort. But the thirst triumphed. She gave herself
the gratification she had desired, and turned on Ellen eyes on whose
dull darkness there floated like oil a glistening look of lewd
accusation. It took the form of a wet, twitching smile. But behind it
was every sort of beaten, desolate envy: the envy of the happy which is
felt by the unhappy: the envy of the woman who has a strong and glorious
man which is felt by the woman who cannot disguise from herself that in
her arms lies weakness and ignobility: the envy of one to whom love has
come as love which is felt by one to whom it has come as a deception and
a sentence to squalor. And she could not be pitied. One cannot weep over
the dead when they have begun to rot: and she was rotten with
resentments. Ellen stared at her in anger and in misery that there
should be one so sad and ill-used whom she could not comfort; and
perceived why at seeing her she had been reminded of an open space round
which stood figures. It was of nothing in art she had been thinking, but
of John Square in Edinburgh, where after nightfall women had leaned
against the garden railings, their backs to the lovely nocturnal mystery
of groves and lawns, their faces turned to the line of rich men's houses
which mounted into the night like tall, impregnable fortresses. If she
had not been preoccupied with the picture rising in her mind she would
have felt fear, for the ultimate meaning of those women she had always
suspected to be danger....

"Making me think evil of my poor mummie too!" Roger sobbed on. "I
thought the reason she didn't come to my meeting this evening was that
she was ashamed to see her son professing Jesus. I thought hardly of her
for not bringing you two along as she promised, because I didn't see you
weren't there, and I preached on the sin of impurity specially for you,
and it was a real sacrifice for me t