She lay in bed, the shades pulled down, smoking, wishing she could lock the door from the inside and just stay here for the next three days, refuse to see anyone, be ill. Instead she must dress, go out into a strange city and take all kinds of responsibilities—the funeral? Her heart beat furiously. What happened when people committed suicide? And all the time she was really an intruder—Edward would not have wished her here, not have chosen her for this task. What did family mean to him? She dressed angrily, efficiently, determined at least that the façade would be impeccable, that she would not again give herself away as she had done last night because, no doubt, she was too tired to be armed. She would do what had to be done, but she would hold herself back, that self that Edward had so completely rejected. She would go home untouched, unchanged. So she said to herself, writing out determination with the red lipstick, drawing the line of her mouth harshly a little redder than usual.

The man at the desk told her that the church was just a few minutes away. “Just a nice little walk,” he said genially. The hotel had been like all hotels, but as soon as she stepped out onto the brick pavement, into the bright October morning, the special quality of the place assailed her, and she became a stranger. She was almost knocked down by a girl on a bicycle, a long red scarf streaming out behind her and a pile of books in the basket. As Isabel walked on, she became part of a procession of students, boys and girls in small groups, a few isolated ones threading their way through, and all moving towards the spires and towers she could see in the distance. They were wholly self-absorbed so that she moved among them like a ghost, watching her step on the irregular pavement, looking up at the old elms and down at their roots humping the bricks under her feet, looking at the churches (there seemed to be a great many). She had now reached a long brick wall enclosing a group of rather formidable Georgian buildings, and here, she was glad to see, a good many of the students turned off. That must be Radcliffe, she thought, relieved to be more or less alone now, with a great expanse of park on her left and in the distance a terribly ugly Gothic tower with a black-faced clock on it, the gold hands just approaching ten. She walked a little faster, for shouldn’t the low gray church she was looking for be just along here?