Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

18. CHAPTER XVIII (continued)

By this time Mary had recovered her self-control.

"No. I thought you weren't happy," she said.

"Why did you think that?" he asked, with some surprise.

"Don't you remember that morning in Lincoln's Inn Fields?" she asked.

"Yes," said Ralph, slackening his pace and remembering Katharine and her engagement, the purple leaves stamped into the path, the white paper radiant under the electric light, and the hopelessness which seemed to surround all these things.

"You're right, Mary," he said, with something of an effort, "though I don't know how you guessed it."

She was silent, hoping that he might tell her the reason of his unhappiness, for his excuses had not deceived her.

"I was unhappy--very unhappy," he repeated. Some six weeks separated him from that afternoon when he had sat upon the Embankment watching his visions dissolve in mist as the waters swam past and the sense of his desolation still made him shiver. He had not recovered in the least from that depression. Here was an opportunity for making himself face it, as he felt that he ought to; for, by this time, no doubt, it was only a sentimental ghost, better exorcised by ruthless exposure to such an eye as Mary's, than allowed to underlie all his actions and thoughts as had been the case ever since he first saw Katharine Hilbery pouring out tea. He must begin, however, by mentioning her name, and this he found it impossible to do. He persuaded himself that he could make an honest statement without speaking her name; he persuaded himself that his feeling had very little to do with her.

"Unhappiness is a state of mind," he said, "by which I mean that it is not necessarily the result of any particular cause."

This rather stilted beginning did not please him, and it became more and more obvious to him that, whatever he might say, his unhappiness had been directly caused by Katharine.