“In the stream of things!” Why should one want to be in the stream of things? questioned Joanna in her upper darkness. Yet it was true that it was terrible to be shut out in undesired solitude. A sudden hatred of this London, so noisily vacant without Louis, this London with its choice between a festering stream of things, and an insane and sterile solitude, rose in her heart like a corroding poison. And what of that invincible inward happiness of which she had so complacently discoursed to Lawrence but a short while ago? Ah, it was easy to talk! All she knew now was that her whole life stayed suspended till her next meeting with Louis.

IV

September had come again, gusty and golden, and Joanna had not yet been put to that test she had almost a year before imagined herself as meeting with a perfection of equanimity.

She was in good spirits, standing before her mirror and trying on an absurd little blue hat. She pinned its feather – its feather that so beautifully matched her jade necklace – first at the front like a hussar; then at back like a sportsman; then at one side like a coquette. And she wondered if Phemie too was pinning on a feather at the other side of the world. Though she was only going to a private view of Arts and Crafts, where she was hardly likely to see Louis, she had dressed with special care.

Her summer holiday had refreshed her, and had been unexpectedly happy. She and Linnet and their mother had enjoyed themselves very peacefully in one of the remoter West Coast villages, and the weather had continued so fine that she had left them there for another week or two by the sea. That her mother and she would be setting up house together in London (Georgie expected a baby early in October) was finally decided. But it no longer seemed a calamity. It was simply a situation, and a situation, Joanna now boasted, could always be mastered with good will and management.