nce. The whole affair disturbed her ideals of virtue and good
taste--that particular mental atmosphere mysteriously, inevitably woven
round the soul by the conditions of special breeding and special life.
If, then, this affair were real it was sordid, and if it were sordid it
was repellent to suppose that her family could be mixed up in it; but
her people were mixed up in it, therefore it must be--nonsense!

So the matter rested until Thyme came back from her visit to her
grandfather, and told them of the little model's new and pretty clothes.
When she detailed this news they were all sitting at dinner, over the
ordering of which Cecilia's loyalty had been taxed till her little
headache came, so that there might be nothing too conventional to
over-nourish Stephen or so essentially aesthetic as not to nourish him
at all. The man servant being in the room, they neither of them raised
their eyes. But when he was gone to fetch the bird, each found the other
looking furtively across the table. By some queer misfortune the word
"sordid" had leaped into their minds again. Who had given her those
clothes? But feeling that it was sordid to pursue this thought, they
looked away, and, eating hastily, began pursuing it. Being man and
woman, they naturally took a different line of chase, Cecilia hunting in
one grove and Stephen in another.

Thus ran Stephen's pack of meditations:

'If old Hilary has been giving her money and clothes and that sort of
thing, he's either a greater duffer than I took him for, or there's
something in it. B.'s got herself to thank, but that won't help to keep
Hughs quiet. He wants money, I expect. Oh, damn!'

Cecilia's pack ran other ways:

'I know the girl can't have bought those things out of her proper
earnings. I believe she's a really bad lot. I don't like to think it,
but it must be so. Hilary can't have been so stupid after what I said to
him. If she really is bad, it simplifies things very much; but Hilary is
just the sort of man who will never believe it. Oh dear!'

It was, to be quite fair, immensely difficult for Stephen and his
wife--or any of their class and circle--in spite of genuinely good
intentions, to really feel the existence of their "shadows," except in
so far as they saw them on the pavements. They knew that these people
lived, because they saw them, but they did not feel it--with such
extraordinary care had the web of social life been spun. They were, and
were bound to be, as