You’re not as cold as you pretend to be,’ she said. ‘I think your doors open in different places, that’s all. Most people just don’t know how to get in to you. They knock and they knock where the door is supposed to be, but it’s a blank wall. But you’re there. I’ve watched you. I’ve seen you do some awfully cold things warmly and some warm things coldly. Or does that make sense?

The years were falling over like ducks in a shooting gallery, and it seemed to Mr. Bridge that he had scarcely taken aim at one when it disappeared.

Thirty, thirty-five, forty, all had come to visit her like admonitory relatives, and all had slipped away without a trace, without a sound, and now, once again, she was waiting.

Passava molto tempo a fissare il vuoto, oppressa da un senso di attesa. Ma attesa di che cosa? Non lo sapeva.

Trenta, trentacinque, quaranta: gli anni erano sempre passati a farle visita come zie criticone, e sempre erano scomparsi senza lasciare traccia, senza fare rumore. E adesso ne era arrivato un altro.

La neve cadde tutta la notte. Cadde senza fare rumore e coprì il terreno gelato e le foglie morte sotto l'acero, e piegò i rami delle conifere, e per ore e ore cadde come farina dalle nuvole alte color madreperla.

Her first name was India-she was never able to get used to it.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world," said Mrs. Bridge, smiling all around, "and I feel awfully lucky. Even so we were certainly glad to see the Union Station. I suppose no matter how far you go there's no place like home." She could see they agreed with her, and surely what she had said was true, yet she was troubled and for a moment she was almost engulfed by a nameless panic.

She spent a great deal of time staring into space, oppressed by the sense that she was waiting. But waiting for what? She did not know. Surely someone would call, someone must be needing her. Yet each day proceeded like the one before. Nothing intense, nothing desperate, ever happened. Time did not move. The home, the city, the nation, and life itself were eternal; still she had a foreboding that one day, without warning and without pity, all the dear, important things would be destroyed.

But not joy. No, that belonged to simpler minds.