As for Rachel, she had scarcely walked through a poor street, and always under the escort of father, maid, or aunts.

“I was going to say that if you’d ever seen the kind of thing that’s going on round you, you’d understand what it is that makes me and men like me politicians.  You asked me a moment ago whether I’d done what I set out to do.  Well, when I consider my life, there is one fact I admit that I’m proud of; owing to me some thousands of girls in Lancashire—­and many thousands to come after them—­can spend an hour every day in the open air which their mothers had to spend over their looms.  I’m prouder of that, I own, than I should be of writing Keats and Shelley into the bargain!”

It became painful to Rachel to be one of those who write Keats and Shelley.  She liked Richard Dalloway, and warmed as he warmed.  He seemed to mean what he said.

“I know nothing!” she exclaimed.

“It’s far better that you should know nothing,” he said paternally, “and you wrong yourself, I’m sure.  You play very nicely, I’m told, and I’ve no doubt you’ve read heaps of learned books.”

Elderly banter would no longer check her.

“You talk of unity,” she said.  “You ought to make me understand.”

“I never allow my wife to talk politics,” he said seriously.  “For this reason.  It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals.  If I have preserved mine, as I am thankful to say that in great measure I have, it is due to the fact that I have been able to come home to my wife in the evening and to find that she has spent her day in calling, music, play with the children, domestic duties—­what you will; her illusions have not been destroyed.  She gives me courage to go on.  The strain of public life is very great,” he added.

This made him appear a battered martyr, parting every day with some of the finest gold, in the service of mankind.

“I can’t think,” Rachel exclaimed, “how any one does it!”

“Explain, Miss Vinrace,” said Richard.  “This is a matter I want to clear up.”

His kindness was genuine, and she determined to take the chance he gave her, although to talk to a man of such worth and authority made her heart beat.

“It seems to me like this,” she began, doing her best first to recollect and then to expose her shivering private visions.

“There’s an old widow in her room, somewhere, let us suppose in the suburbs of Leeds.”

Richard bent his head to show that he accepted the widow.

“In London you’re spending your life, talking, writing things, getting bills through, missing what seems natural.  The result of it all is that she goes to her cupboard and finds a little more tea, a few lumps of sugar, or a little less tea and a newspaper.  Widows all over the country I admit do this.  Still, there’s the mind of the widow—­the affections; those you leave untouched.  But you waste you own.”