Mad now, she scrawled her name on the back of the cheque, caught up her hat and ran downstairs into the street. At the corner there generally stood a miserable woman with a baby, selling flowers. She was there now. Maggy was a regular customer of hers. She thrust the cheque upon her.
"It's signed on the back. Take it—oh, take it!" she said wildly, closed the dumfounded woman's fingers on the cheque, and sped on.
She went fast, walking aimlessly, conscious of nothing but the desire for movement. She wanted to lose herself, to forget herself. Of the things around her she saw nothing, heard nothing. Her processes of thought seemed to be exhausted. Her brain was a mere reservoir of utter hopelessness.
Yet, all the while, it was insensibly driving her in a given direction. In a dull way she realized this when she found herself in the street where Woolf lived. She had never been there since the day of that eventful lunch with him, seven months ago. The memory of it had a clarifying effect on her troubled mind. It calmed her frenzy. She asked herself what she meant to do, but could find no answer. She had not consciously intended going to his house. All motive for doing so was absent. Yet she could not pass it.
She rang the bell, and when the door was opened enquired for Woolf.
"Mr. Woolf is not in, miss," said the servant; "but Lady Susan is, if you would like to see her."
Maggy, still mentally benumbed, entered and followed her.
XLII
The room Maggy was shown into was occupied by a woman of about twenty-seven, busy at the telephone. She looked up casually, keeping the receiver at her ear.
"Take a pew," she said, and addressed herself to the instrument again, continuing a momentarily interrupted conversation.