So she had poured out tea, so she had
criticized Mr. Clacton's leaflets a hundred times already; but now it
seemed to her that she was doing it in a different spirit; she had
enlisted in the army, and was a volunteer no longer. She had renounced
something and was now--how could she express it?;--not quite "in the
running" for life. She had always known that Mr. Clacton and Mrs. Seal
were not in the running, and across the gulf that separated them she
had seen them in the guise of shadow people, flitting in and out of
the ranks of the living--eccentrics, undeveloped human beings, from
whose substance some essential part had been cut away. All this had
never struck her so clearly as it did this afternoon, when she felt
that her lot was cast with them for ever. One view of the world
plunged in darkness, so a more volatile temperament might have argued
after a season of despair, let the world turn again and show another,
more splendid, perhaps. No, Mary thought, with unflinching loyalty to
what appeared to her to be the true view, having lost what is best, I
do not mean to pretend that any other view does instead. Whatever
happens, I mean to have no presences in my life.
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