“We shall be seeing you again in a few days, madam?” That was Nana. Never. Never again.

“Oh, yes, I expect so!” Lying. That was lying, real lying. Stephen could accuse her with justice now. Liar and cheat. Stephen, Mr. Hengist. Liar and cheat, liar and cheat.

Chapter Nineteen

There was a hotel off Baker Street, quite a small one. Someone had told her about it, and the name stuck in her mind. She told the taxi-driver to take her there. All the way up to town she had wondered where to go, or what to do. The first thought had been home. She had no home. She had left the Boltons for Queen’s Halt. Now she had left that, and there was no home. She could not go back to the Boltons. She thought of her aunt’s horror and distress, Lawrence’s anger. They would not understand. They would try to make her go back to Stephen. They might even say that she had disgraced them. Well . . . She supposed she had, only how much were they to blame? She didn’t want to see them. If she had been an innocent, pretending fool, it was their fault. They had taught her to pretend to be ignorant. They had reared her in a rose-mist, and given her, like that, into a man’s power. Aunt Anne would never see that it was all her fault. She would talk meaningless platitudes. She could not see Aunt Anne yet. Not until she had become calm after this awful storm.

There was Mrs. Ramsay. She had said, If ever you want help, come to me. Yes, but you couldn’t run away from a man to his mother. Mrs. Ramsay’s sympathies would be with Stephen. You could not possibly go to her; soon she would hate you because you did not love her son.