‘Perhaps you are right,’ I agreed.

The conversation grew fragmentary, and less and less formal.  Mrs. Ispenlove was the chief talker.  I remember she said that she was always being thrown among clever people, people who could do things, and that her own inability to do anything at all was getting to be an obsession with her; and that people like me could have no idea of the tortures of self-depreciation which she suffered.  Her voice was strangely wistful during this confession.  She also spoke—­once only, and quite shortly, but with what naive enthusiasm!—­of the high mission and influence of the novelist who wrote purely and conscientiously.  After this, though my liking for her was undiminished, I had summed her up.  Mr. Ispenlove offered no commentary on his wife’s sentiments.  He struck me as being a reserved man, whose inner life was intense and sufficient to him.

‘Ah!’ I reflected, as Mrs. Ispenlove, with an almost motherly accent, urged me to have another cup of tea, ’if you knew me, if you knew me, what would you say to me?  Would your charity be strong enough to overcome your instincts?’ And as I had felt older than my aunt, so I felt older than Mrs. Ispenlove.

I left, but I had to promise to come again on the morrow, after I had seen Mr. Ispenlove on business.  The publisher took me down to my hotel in the brougham (and I thought of the drive with Diaz, but the water was not streaming down the windows), and then he returned to his office.

Without troubling to turn on the light in my bedroom, I sank sighing on to the bed.  The events of the afternoon had roused me from my terrible lethargy, but now it overcame me again.  I tried to think clearly about the Ispenloves and what the new acquaintance meant for me; but I could not think clearly.  I had not been able to think clearly for two months.  I wished only to die.  For a moment I meditated vaguely on suicide, but suicide seemed to involve an amount of complicated enterprise far beyond my capacity.  It amazed me how I had managed to reach London.  I must have come mechanically, in a heavy dream; for I had no hope, no energy, no vivacity, no interest.  For many weeks my mind had revolved round an awful possibility, as if hypnotized by it, and that monotonous revolution seemed alone to constitute my real life.  Moreover, I was subject to recurring nausea, and to disconcerting bodily pains and another symptom.

‘This must end!’ I said, struggling to my feet.

I summoned the courage of an absolute disgust.  I felt that the power which had triumphed over my dejection and my irresolution and brought me to London might carry me a little further.

Leaving the hotel, I crossed the Strand.  Innumerable omnibuses were crawling past.  I jumped into one at hazard, and the conductor put his arm behind my back to support me.  He was shouting, ‘Putney, Putney, Putney!’ in an absent-minded manner:  he had assisted me to mount without even looking at me.  I climbed to the top of the omnibus and sat down, and the omnibus moved off.  I knew not where I was going; Putney was nothing but a name to me.