had read, and keeping it to herself, and gnawing its contents
in privacy, and pondering the meaning without sharing
her thoughts with any one, or having to decide whether
the book was a good one or a bad one. This evening she
had twisted the words of Dostoevsky to suit her mood—
a fatalistic mood—to proclaim that the process of discovery
was life, and that, presumably, the nature of one’s
goal mattered not at all. She sat down for a moment
upon one of the seats; felt herself carried along in the
swirl of many things; decided, in her sudden way, that it
was time to heave all this thinking overboard, and rose,
leaving a fishmonger’s basket on the seat behind her.
Two minutes later her rap sounded with authority upon
Rodney’s door.
“Well, William,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m late.”
It was true, but he was so glad to see her that he forgot
his annoyance. He had been occupied for over an hour in
making things ready for her, and he now had his reward
in seeing her look right and left, as she slipped her cloak
from her shoulders, with evident satisfaction, although
she said nothing. He had seen that the fire burnt well;
jam-pots were on the table, tin covers shone in the fender,
and the shabby comfort of the room was extreme. He was
dressed in his old crimson dressing-gown, which was faded
irregularly, and had bright new patches on it, like the
paler grass which one finds on lifting a stone. He made
the tea, and Katharine drew off her gloves, and crossed
her legs with a gesture that was rather masculine in its
114
Virginia Woolf
ease. Nor did they talk much until they were smoking
cigarettes over the fire, having placed their teacups upon
the floor between them.
They had not met since they had exchanged letters about
their relationship. Katharine’s answer to his protestation
had been short and sensible. Half a sheet of notepaper
contained the whole of it, for she merely had to say that
she was not in love with him, and so could not marry
him, but their friendship would continue, she hoped,
unchanged. She had added a postscript in which she
stated, “I like your sonnet very much.”
So far as William was concerned, this appearance of
ease was assumed. Three times that afternoon he had
dressed himself in a tail-coat, and three times he had
discarded it for an old dressing-gown; three times he had
placed his pearl tie-pin in position, and three times he
had removed it again, the little looking-glass in his room
being the witness of these changes of mind. The question
was, which would Katharine prefer on this particular
afternoon in December? He read her note once more, and
the postscript about the sonnet settled the matter. Evi
dently she admired most the poet in him; and as this, on
the whole, agreed with his own opinion, he decided to
err, if anything, on the side of shabbiness. His demeanor
was also regulated with premeditation; he spoke little,
and only on impersonal matters; he wished her to realize
that in visiting him for the first time alone she was doing
nothing remarkable, although, in fact, that was a point
about which he was not at all sure.
Certainly Katharine seemed quite unmoved by any disturbing
thoughts; and if he had been completely master
of himself, he might, indeed, have complained that she
was a trifle absent-minded. The ease, the familiarity of
the situation alone with Rodney, among teacups and
candles, had more effect upon her than was apparent.
She asked to look at his books, and then at his pictures.
It was while she held photograph from the Greek in her
hands that she exclaimed, impulsively, if incongruously:
“My oysters! I had a basket,” she explained, “and I’ve
left it somewhere. Uncle Dudley dines with us to-night.
What in the world have I done with them?”
She rose and began to wander about the room. William
115
Night and Day
rose also, and stood in front of the fire, muttering, “Oysters,
oysters—your basket of oysters!” but though he
looked vaguely here and there, as if the oysters might be
on the top of the bookshelf, his eyes returned always to
Katharine. She drew the curtain and looked out among
the scanty leaves of the plane-trees.
“I had them,” she calculated, “in the Strand; I sat on a
seat. Well, never mind,” she concluded, turning back into
the room abruptly, “I dare say some old creature is enjoying
them by this time.”
“I should have thought that you never forgot anything,”
William remarked, as they settled down again.
“That’s part of the myth about me, I know,” Katharine
replied.
“And I wonder,” William proceeded, with some caution,
“what the truth about you is? But I know this sort of
thing doesn’t interest you,” he added hastily, with a touch
of peevishness.
“No; it doesn’t interest me very much,” she replied candidly.
“What shall we talk about then?” he asked.
She looked rather whimsically round the walls of the
room.
“However we start, we end by talking about the same
thing—about poetry, I mean. I wonder if you realize,
William, that I’ve never read even Shakespeare? It’s rather
wonderful how I’ve kept it up all these years.”
“You’ve kept it up for ten years very beautifully, as far
as I’m concerned,” he said.
“Ten years? So long as that?”
“And I don’t think it’s always bored you,” he added.
She looked into the fire silently. She could not deny
that the surface of her feeling was absolutely unruffled
by anything in William’s character; on the contrary, she
felt certain that she could deal with whatever turned up.
He gave her peace, in which she could think of things
that were far removed from what they talked about. Even
now, when he sat within a yard of her, how easily her
mind ranged hither and thither! Suddenly a picture presented
itself before her, without any effort on her part as
pictures will, of herself in these very rooms; she had come
in from a lecture, and she held a pile of books in her
116
Virginia Woolf
hand, scientific books, and books about mathematics and
astronomy which she had mastered. She put them down
on the table over there. It was a picture plucked from her
life two or three years hence, when she was married to
William; but here she checked herself abruptly.
She could not entirely forget William’s presence, because,
in spite of his efforts to control himself, his nervousness
was apparent. On such occasions his eyes protruded
more than ever, and his face had more than ever
the appearance of being covered with a thin crackling
skin, through which every flush of his volatile blood
showed itself instantly. By this time he had shaped so
many sentences and rejected them, felt so many impulses
and subdued them, that he was a uniform scarlet.
“You may say you don’t read books,” he remarked, “but,
all the same, you know about them. Besides, who wants
you to be learned? Leave that to the poor devils who’ve
got nothing better to do. You—you—ahem!—”
“Well, then, why don’t you read me something before I
go?” said Katharine, looking at her watch.
“Katharine, you’ve only just come! Let me see now, what
have I got to show you?” He rose, and stirred about the
papers on his table, as if in doubt; he then picked up a
manuscript, and after spreading it smoothly upon his knee,
he looked up at Katharine suspiciously. He caught her
smiling.
“I believe you only ask me to read out of kindness,” he
burst out. “Let’s find something else to talk about. Who
have you been seeing?”
“I don’t generally ask things out of kindness,” Katharine
observed; “however, if you don’t want to read, you
needn’t.”
William gave a queer snort of exasperation, and opened
his manuscript once more, though he kept his eyes upon
her face as he did so. No face could have been graver or
more judicial.
“One can trust you, certainly, to say unpleasant things,”
he said, smoothing out the page, clearing his throat, and
reading half a stanza to himself. “Ahem! The Princess is
lost in the wood, and she hears the sound of a horn.
(This would all be very pretty on the stage, but I can’t
get the effect here.) Anyhow, Sylvano enters, accompa
117
Night and Day
nied by the rest of the gentlemen of Gratian’s court. I
begin where he soliloquizes.” He jerked his head and began
to read.
Although Katharine had just disclaimed any knowledge
of literature, she listened attentively. At least, she listened
to the first twenty-five lines attentively, and then
she frowned. Her attention was only aroused again when
Rodney raised his finger—a sign, she knew, that the meter
was about to change.
His theory was that every mood has its meter. His mastery
of meters was very great; and, if the beauty of a
drama depended upon the variety of measures in which
the personages speak, Rodney’s plays must have challenged
the works of Shakespeare. Katharine’s ignorance
of Shakespeare did not prevent her from feeling fairly
certain that plays should not produce a sense of chill
stupor in the audience, such as overcame her as the lines
flowed on, sometimes long and sometimes short, but always
delivered with the same lilt of voice, which seemed
to nail each line firmly on to the same spot in the hearer’s
brain. Still, she reflected, these sorts of skill are almost
exclusively masculine; women neither practice them nor
know how to value them; and one’s husband’s proficiency
in this direction might legitimately increase one’s respect
for him, since mystification is no bad basis for respect.
No one could doubt that William was a scholar. The reading
ended with the finish of the Act; Katharine had prepared
a little speech.
“That seems to me extremely well written, William; although,
of course, I don’t know enough to criticize in
detail.”
“But it’s the skill that strikes you—not the emotion?”
“In a fragment like that, of course, the skill strikes one
most.”
“But perhaps—have you time to listen to one more
short piece? the scene between the lovers? There’s some
real feeling in that, I think. Denham agrees that it’s the
best thing I’ve done.”
“You’ve read it to Ralph Denham?” Katharine inquired,
with surprise. “He’s a better judge than I am. What did
he say?”
“My dear Katharine,” Rodney exclaimed, “I don’t ask
118
Virginia Woolf
you for criticism, as I should ask a scholar. I dare say
there are only five men in England whose opinion of my
work matters a straw to me. But I trust you where feeling
is concerned. I had you in my mind often when I was
writing those scenes. I kept asking myself, ‘Now is this
the sort of thing Katharine would like?’ I always think of
you when I’m writing, Katharine, even when it’s the sort
of thing you wouldn’t know about. And I’d rather—yes, I
really believe I’d rather—you thought well of my writing
than any one in the world.”
This was so genuine a tribute to his trust in her that
Katharine was touched.
“You think too much of me altogether, William,” she
said, forgetting that she had not meant to speak in this
way.
“No, Katharine, I don’t,” he replied, replacing his manuscript
in the drawer. “It does me good to think of you.”
So quiet an answer, followed as it was by no expression
of love, but merely by the statement that if she must go
he would take her to the Strand, and would, if she could
wait a moment, change his dressing-gown for a coat,
moved her to the warmest feeling of affection for him
that she had yet experienced. While he changed in the
next room, she stood by the bookcase, taking down books
and opening them, but reading nothing on their pages.
She felt certain that she would marry Rodney. How could
one avoid it? How could one find fault with it? Here she
sighed, and, putting the thought of marriage away, fell
into a dream state, in which she became another person,
and the whole world seemed changed. Being a frequent
visitor to that world, she could find her way there
unhesitatingly. If she had tried to analyze her impressions,
she would have said that there dwelt the realities
of the appearances which figure in our world; so direct,
powerful, and unimpeded were her sensations there, compared
with those called forth in actual life. There dwelt
the things one might have felt, had there been cause;
the perfect happiness of which here we taste the fragment;
the beauty seen here in flying glimpses only. No
doubt much of the furniture of this world was drawn directly
from the past, and even from the England of the
Elizabethan age. However the embellishment of this imagi
119
Night and Day
nary world might change, two qualities were constant in
it. It was a place where feelings were liberated from the
constraint which the real world puts upon them; and the
process of awakenment was always marked by resignation
and a kind of stoical acceptance of facts. She met no
acquaintance there, as Denham did, miraculously transfigured;
she played no heroic part. But there certainly
she loved some magnanimous hero, and as they swept
together among the leaf-hung trees of an unknown world,
they shared the feelings which came fresh and fast as the
waves on the shore. But the sands of her liberation were
running fast; even through the forest branches came
sounds of Rodney moving things on his dressing-table;
and Katharine woke herself from this excursion by shutting
the cover of the book she was holding, and replacing
it in the bookshelf.
“William,” she said, speaking rather faintly at first, like
one sending a voice from sleep to reach the living. “William,”
she repeated firmly, “if you still want me to marry
you, I will.”
Perhaps it was that no man could expect to have the
most momentous question of his life settled in a voice so
