There were no more parties at the cottage; they were held at The Judge’s House instead, and were therefore presumably more decorous. Sophia did not know. She was not asked to any of them and would not have gone if she had been. There was a week of her poor little holiday left to her, and in it she had plenty to do.

She had humbly offered to call on Toby’s mother at any time and on any day which should be convenient to her. Toby’s mother, replying with dignity through a letter from Toby, chose Thursday afternoon at half past three.

Sophia felt really despairing when she heard the hour. Its awful earliness suggested that Toby’s mother was going to make an afternoon of it. Francis and Toby were extremely grateful to her, but she felt too miserable and frightened to be soothed by this. It was a horrid situation, she felt: she could not even see any humour in it. She had to confront an angry, shocked stranger and justify her brother’s action …

It occurred to her, not for the first time in the last ten wretched days, that she was always justifying her brothers’ actions to somebody. She seemed, as the poem says, born for naught else.

So on Thursday afternoon, dressed with dismal care in a frock of grey silk, a snowy collar, and her large black artist’s hat to give her courage, for it was becoming, Sophia set out for Highbury.

Of course she felt sick with nervousness and her stomach churned about miserably and her heart banged. She sat in the Tube and wished that she were dead, while Harry, Francis, the cottage, the two thousand pounds, Juan and Francis’s letter went round in her head in an exhausting whirl. Her holiday seemed years away. She felt as tired as though she had never had one.

Suddenly she thought, I can’t stand much more of this. We’ll have to separate. It’s no use. I’d better face it. They’ll be happier without me, and I can’t do anything for them. It’s awful, it’s horrible, I can hardly bear to think about it, but it’s got to happen.

As soon as the thought had come into the foreground of her mind she felt more calm. She pushed it away again until she could have time to get used to its sadness, but she no longer resisted it, trying desperately to cling to the hope that matters would come right. They could not come right.

She could not change her nature and cease to disapprove of wild parties, extravagance and irresponsibility, and her brothers would not cease – at least, for a long time they would not cease – to want these things. In such circumstances it was mere stupidity to hope for an adjustment. No one had any influence with Harry and Francis except their sister, and she had failed to bring to them a sense of sobriety and purpose.

The forces of heredity and early environment had proved too strong for her, just as the accumulated forces of twenty years had defeated her when she had tried to rescue her mother from cruelty and drudgery.