And when she had said good-bye to Mrs. Heron and the children, and found herself in the doctor's brougham, shut up all alone with Brodrick, she said to herself that it was for the last time. When she let him take her back to Kensington Square, when she let him sit with her there for ten minutes in the half-darkness, she said to herself that it was for the last time. And when he rose suddenly, almost violently, for departure, she knew it was for the last time.
"It was good of you," she said, "to bring me home."
"Do you call this a home?" said Brodrick.
"Why not? It's all I want."
"Is it?" he said savagely, and left her.
He was intensely disagreeable; but that also, she told herself, was for the last time.
As long as Brodrick was there she could listen to the voice inside her, murmuring incessantly of last times, and ordering her to keep out of it and let the poor woman have her chance.
But when he was gone another voice, that was there too, told her that she could not keep out of it. She was being drawn in again, into the toils of life. When it had seemed to her that she drew, she was being drawn. She was drawn by all the things that she had cut herself off from, by holding hands, and searching eyes, and unforgotten tendernesses. In the half-darkness of her room the faces she had been living with were all about her. She felt again the brushing of Winny's hair over her cheek. She heard Winny's mother saying that she liked her. She saw Brodrick sitting opposite her, and the look with which he had watched her when he thought she was asleep.
And when the inward admonitory voice reiterated, "Don't be drawn," the other answered, "Whether I'm out of it or in it the poor woman hasn't got a chance."