Veronica explained that she was sick of other peoples’s faces, and was certain, comfortably, that Sydney would understand what she meant. Sitting here in Sydney’s room, to which she hadn’t yet been invited, among Sydney’s possessions, gave her a feeling of being listened to which she would never have had on neutral ground. Ordinarily, this would not have affected her one way or the other; she herself never listened very attentively to what other people were saying. The gist of their remarks was enough for her. This was a north room; the morning’s sun was reflected back to it faintly from the face of the hill. Veronica preferred her own room, and thought that it was just like Sydney to be at the back of the first floor instead of the front of the fourth, with a balcony and sunshine. She, Joan and Eileen shared a room with sloping ceilings that resembled a rabbit-hutch. This, she thought, looking round her, was rarefied but rather depressing.

‘Does it seem to you,’ she said weightily, ‘that this world is entirely divided into rather stupid men and very silly women? And that the stupid are all one will ever have to hope for and that the silly are all one can ever become?’

Sydney, thoughtful over this, was certain that there must be other variations.

‘There aren’t,’ said Veronica defiantly. ‘I think you are usually fairly lucid, and at present I am; I have absolutely no illusions about anyone. Look at the things people say to you and the things they expect you to do, and the ridiculous way people don’t know what they want and the fuss they make when they can’t get it. Look at the sort of way people go on if you ask them for any opinion about anything you’ve done.’

‘I never ask anybody else their opinion,’ said Sydney (she felt odiously).

‘One must have something to go by.’

‘Go by yourself.’

‘As a matter or fact,’ said Veronica, rolling sideways on to her elbow to pluck a long white feather out of the eiderdown, ‘I suppose I’m rather humble, really. By the way,’ she added after a pause in which two more feathers had been extracted, ‘what is your absolutely candid opinion of the man Victor?’

‘How absolutely candid? – I mean, would anything hurt?’

‘Nothing, thanks. Do I look it?’

‘Well, candidly, I do think he’s rather a dreary young man.’

‘I though you did,’ said Veronica briskly; ‘everybody seems to. Of course, I know him fairly well.’

‘And isn’t he?’