all who had lived in it; and while Helen waited for George's coming, she
felt them moving round her.

There were the thoughts of the people who had lived in the house before
Mr. Pinderwell, and these were massed and indistinct, yet the more
troubled; they were too old for form, too young for indifference, and
they thronged about her, asking for deliverance. She could not give it,
and she was jostled by a crowd that came closer than any one of flesh
and blood: it got inside her brain and frightened her. The thoughts of
Mr. Pinderwell were familiar, but now she could better understand his
wild young despair, the pain of his lonely manhood, the madness of his
old age. Yet, when she thought of him, she said again, "It's worse for
me." Mr. Pinderwell had not been obliged to marry some one else, and,
though he did not know it, his children lived. Nearer than his thoughts,
but less insistent than the formless ones that pressed about her,
begging shamelessly, were those of Mildred Caniper. Helen saw them in
the dining-room where they had been made, and they were rigid under
suffering, dignified, but not quite lost to humour, and because she did
not know their cause, because their creator lay upstairs, dead to such
activities, Helen had a horror of them that made her watch the clock for
George's hour. She was less afraid of George than of these shapeless,
powerful things, this accumulated evidence of what life did with its
own; and until he came she talked to Jim, quickly and incessantly,
careless of what she said, if words could calm her.

"Jim, Jim, Jim! I must say something, so I'll say your name, and then
other things will come. I do not intend to be silly. I won't let you be
silly, Helen. You mustn't spoil things. It's absurd--and wicked! And
there's snow outside. It's so deep that I shan't hear him come. And I
wish he'd come, Jim. Funny to wish that. Jim, I'm afraid to turn my
head. It feels stiff. And I ought to go upstairs and look at Notya's
fire, but I don't like the hall. That's where they all meet. And I don't
know how I dare say these things aloud. I'll talk about something else.
Suppose I hadn't you? What shall we have for dinner tomorrow? There's a
bone for you, and the jelly for Notya, and for me--an egg, perhaps.
Boiled, baked, fried, poached, scrambled, omeletted? Somehow, somehow.
What shall I say next? Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, and
all that kind of thing. That will take a long time. I know I