inished her. Really
generals . . .

The war finished Scrap. It killed the one man she felt safe
with, whom she would have married, and it finally disgusted her with
love. Since then she had been embittered. She was struggling as
angrily in the sweet stuff of life as a wasp got caught in honey. Just
as desperately did she try to unstick her wings. It gave her no
pleasure to outdo other women; she didn't want their tiresome men.
What could one do with men when one had got them? None of them would
talk to her of anything but the things of love, and how foolish and
fatiguing that became after a bit. It was as though a healthy person
with a normal hunger was given nothing whatever to eat but sugar.
Love, love . . . the very word made her want to slap somebody. "Why
should I love you? Why should I?" she would ask amazed sometimes when
somebody was trying--somebody was always trying--to propose to her.
But she never got a real answer, only further incoherence.

A deep cynicism took hold of the unhappy Scrap. Her inside grew
hoary with disillusionment, while her gracious and charming outside
continued to make the world more beautiful. What had the future in it
for her? She would not be able, after such a preparation, to take hold
of it. She was fit for nothing; she had wasted all this time being
beautiful. Presently she wouldn't be beautiful, and what then? Scrap
didn't know what then, it appalled her to wonder even. Tired as she
was of being conspicuous she was at least used to that, she had never
known anything else; and to become inconspicuous, to fade, to grow
shabby and dim, would probably be most painful. And once she began,
what years and years of it there would be! Imagine, thought Scrap,
having most of one's life at the wrong end. Imagine being old for two
or three times as long as being young. Stupid, stupid. Everything was
stupid. There wasn't a thing she wanted to do. There were thousands
of things she didn't want to do. Avoidance, silence, invisibility, if
possible unconsciousness--these negations were all she asked for a
moment; and here, even here, she was not allowed a minute's peace, and
this absurd woman must come pretending, merely because she wanted to
exercise power and make her go to bed and make her--hideous--drink
castor oil, that she thought she was ill.

"I'm sure," said Mrs. Fisher, who felt the cold of the stone
beginning to come through and knew she could not sit much lon