She pictured the kitchen as a battlefield, and Spot slain.
Opening the door, she stepped out into the corridor,
"Constance," said a low voice above her.
She jumped.
"Is that you?"
"Yes."
"Well, don't bother to go down to the dogs; they'll stop in a moment.
Fossette won't bite.
I'm so sorry she's upsetting the house."
Constance stared upwards, and discerned a pale shadow.
The dogs did soon cease their altercation.
This short colloquy in the dark affected Constance strangely.
III
The next morning, after a night varied by periods of wakefulness not unpleasant, Sophia arose and, taking due precautions against cold, went to the window.
It was Saturday; she had left Paris on the Thursday.
She looked forth upon the Square, holding aside the blind.
She had expected, of course, to find that the Square had shrunk in size; but nevertheless she was startled to see how small it was. It seemed to her scarcely bigger than a courtyard.
She could remember a winter morning when from the window she had watched the Square under virgin snow in the lamplight, and the Square had been vast, and the first wayfarer, crossing it diagonally and leaving behind him the irregular impress of his feet, had appeared to travel for hours over an interminable white waste before vanishing past Holl's shop in the direction of the Town Hall.
She chiefly recalled the Square under snow; cold mornings, and the coldness of the oil-cloth at the window, and the draught of cold air through the ill-fitting sash (it was put right now)!
These visions of herself seemed beautiful to her; her childish existence seemed beautiful; the storms and tempests of her girlhood seemed beautiful; even the great sterile expanse of tedium when, after giving up a scholastic career, she had served for two years in the shop--even this had a strange charm in her memory.
And she thought that not for millions of pounds would she live her life over again.
In its contents the Square had not surprisingly changed during the immense, the terrifying interval that separated her from her virginity.
On the east side, several shops had been thrown into one, and forced into a semblance of eternal unity by means of a coat of stucco.
And there was a fountain at the north end which was new to her.
No other constructional change!
But the moral change, the sad declension from the ancient proud spirit of the Square--this was painfully depressing.
Several establishments lacked tenants, had obviously lacked tenants for a long time;
'To let' notices hung in their stained and dirty upper windows, and clung insecurely to their closed shutters.
And on the sign-boards of these establishments were names that Sophia did not know.
The character of most of the shops seemed to have worsened; they had become pettifogging little holes, unkempt, shabby, poor; they had no brightness, no feeling of vitality.
And the floor of the Square was littered with nondescript refuse.
The whole scene, paltry, confined, and dull, reached for her the extreme of provinciality.
It was what the French called, with a pregnant intonation, la province.
This--being said, there was nothing else to say.
Bursley, of course, was in the provinces; Bursley must, in the nature of things, be typically provincial.
But in her mind it had always been differentiated from the common province; it had always had an air, a distinction, and especially St. Luke's Square!
That illusion was now gone.
Still, the alteration was not wholly in herself; it was not wholly subjective.
The Square really had changed for the worse; it might not be smaller, but it had deteriorated.
As a centre of commerce it had assuredly approached very near to death.
On a Saturday morning thirty years ago it would have been covered with linen-roofed stalls, and chattering country-folk, and the stir of bargains.
Now, Saturday morning was like any other morning in the Square, and the glass-roof of St. Luke's market in Wedgwood Street, which she could see from her window, echoed to the sounds of noisy commerce.
In that instance business had simply moved a few yards to the east; but Sophia knew, from hints in Constance's letters and in her talk, that business in general had moved more than a few yards, it had moved a couple of miles--to arrogant and pushing Hanbridge, with its electric light and its theatres and its big, advertising shops.
The heaven of thick smoke over the Square, the black deposit on painted woodwork, the intermittent hooting of steam syrens, showed that the wholesale trade of Bursley still flourished. But Sophia had no memories of the wholesale trade of Bursley; it meant nothing to the youth of her heart; she was attached by intimate links to the retail traffic of Bursley, and as a mart old Bursley was done for.
She thought:
"It would kill me if I had to live here.
It's deadening.
It weighs on you.
And the dirt, and the horrible ugliness!
And the--way they talk, and the way they think!