‘Imagine that we passed our days here!’ said Ursula.

‘I know,’ cried Gudrun. ‘It is too appalling. What must we be like, if we are the contents of THIS!’

‘Vile!’ said Ursula. ‘It really is.’

And she recognised half-burnt covers of ‘Vogue’ — half-burnt representations of women in gowns — lying under the grate.

They went to the drawing-room. Another piece of shut-in air; without weight or substance, only a sense of intolerable papery imprisonment in nothingness. The kitchen did look more substantial, because of the red-tiled floor and the stove, but it was cold and horrid.

The two girls tramped hollowly up the bare stairs. Every sound reechoed under their hearts. They tramped down the bare corridor. Against the wall of Ursula’s