9
“You don’t think of riding up over the downs at this time of night?” It was like an At home. Everybody in the shop was in it, but she was not in it. Marlborough thoughts rattling in all the heads; with Sunday coming. They had sick and dying relations. But it was all in Marlborough. Marlborough was all round them all the time, the daily look of it, the morning coming each day excitingly, all the people seeing each other again and the day going on. They did not know that that was it; or what it was they liked. Talking and thinking with the secret hidden all the time even from themselves. But it was that that made them talk and make such a to do about everything. They had to hide it because if they knew they would feel fat and complacent and wicked. They were fat and complacent because they did not know it.
“Oh yes I do,” said Miriam in feeble husky tones.
She stood squarely in front of the grating. The people became angry gliding forms; cheated; angry in an eternal resentful silence; pretending. The man began thoughtfully ticking off the words.
“How far have you come” he said suddenly pausing and looking up through the grating.
“From London.”
“Then you’ve just come down through the Forest.”
“Is that a forest?”
“You must have come through Savernake.”
“I didn’t know it was a forest.”