Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

20. CHAPTER XX (continued)

While Mary Datchet was undergoing this curious transformation from the particular to the universal, Mrs. Seal remembered her duties with regard to the kettle and the gas-fire. She was a little surprised to find that Mary had drawn her chair to the window, and, having lit the gas, she raised herself from a stooping posture and looked at her. The most obvious reason for such an attitude in a secretary was some kind of indisposition. But Mary, rousing herself with an effort, denied that she was indisposed.

"I'm frightfully lazy this afternoon," she added, with a glance at her table. "You must really get another secretary, Sally."

The words were meant to be taken lightly, but something in the tone of them roused a jealous fear which was always dormant in Mrs. Seal's breast. She was terribly afraid that one of these days Mary, the young woman who typified so many rather sentimental and enthusiastic ideas, who had some sort of visionary existence in white with a sheaf of lilies in her hand, would announce, in a jaunty way, that she was about to be married.

"You don't mean that you're going to leave us?" she said.

"I've not made up my mind about anything," said Mary--a remark which could be taken as a generalization.

Mrs. Seal got the teacups out of the cupboard and set them on the table.

"You're not going to be married, are you?" she asked, pronouncing the words with nervous speed.

"Why are you asking such absurd questions this afternoon, Sally?" Mary asked, not very steadily. "Must we all get married?"

Mrs. Seal emitted a most peculiar chuckle. She seemed for one moment to acknowledge the terrible side of life which is concerned with the emotions, the private lives, of the sexes, and then to sheer off from it with all possible speed into the shades of her own shivering virginity. She was made so uncomfortable by the turn the conversation had taken, that she plunged her head into the cupboard, and endeavored to abstract some very obscure piece of china.