he looked wet, and his hair was a horror to me.  His voice was tired of dealing with fluff—­though he didn’t deal with it so intimately as we did—­and it only allowed him to whisper.  The forewoman was always cross, but always as if she would rather not be so, as if she were being cross for a bet, and as if some one were watching her to see she was not kind by mistake.  She looked terribly ill, because she had worked there for three months, which was a record.  I stood it five weeks, and then I had a hemorrhage—­only from the throat, the doctor said.  I wanted to go to bed, but you can’t, because the panel doctors in these parts will not come to you.  My doctor was half an enormous mile away, and it seemed he only existed between seven and nine in the evenings.  So I stayed up, so as not to get too weak to walk.  I went and asked the governor for my stamps.  I had only five stamps due to me, only five valuable threepences had been stopped out of my wages.  But I had a silly conviction at that time that the Insurance Act was invented to help working people.  What an absurd idea of mine!  I went to the Jew for my card.  He said mine was a hard case, but I was not entitled to a card; nobody under thirty, he said, was allowed by law to have a card.  So I said it was only fair to tell him I was going to the Factory and Insurance Inspectors about him.  I told him lots of things, and I was so angry that I cried.  He was very angry too, and made me feel sick by splashing his wet hair about.  He said it was unfair for ladies to interfere in things they knew nothing about.  I said I interfered because I knew nothing about it, but that now I knew.  I said that ladies and women had exactly the same kind of inside, and it was a kind that never thrived on fluff instead of food.  I told him how I spent my ten shillings.  He couldn’t interrupt really, because he had no voice.  Then I fainted, and a friend I have there, called Mrs. Love, came in.  She had been listening at the door.  She was very good to me.

“Then, when I was well again, I found another job, but I shan’t tell you what it is.  As for the Inspectors, I complained, but—­what’s the use?  So long as you must put fluff of that pernicious kind into bolsters, just so long will you kill the strength and the beauty of women.  It looked so like a deadlock that it frightened me, and now in this wonderful life I lead, my Friend won’t let me think of it.  A deadlock is a dreadful accident, isn’t it? because in theory it doesn’t exist.  I am working for a new end now.  Isn’t it splendid that there is really no Place Called Stop?  There is always an end beyond the end, always something to love and look forward to.  Life is a luxury, isn’t it? there’s no use in it—­but how delightful!”

“You haven’t told me about the sea yet,” said Kew.

“Because I don’t think you’d believe me.  We were always liars, weren’t we?  That’s because we’re romantic, or if it’s not romance, the symptoms of the disease are very like.  Why can’t we get rid of it all as Anonyma does?  She has no gift except the gift of being able to get rid of superfluous romance.  She takes that great ease impersonally, her pose is, ‘It’s a gift from Heaven, and an infernal bore.’  But I never get nearer to joy than I do in this Secret World of mine, and with my Secret Friend.”