looked up and seen him, and her sudden arrested sniff held them both
there as though by some third invisible power. He saw that she was
crying; he saw her red nose, mottled cheeks, untidy hair. It was the
most awful moment of his young life. He had never seen a grown-up
person cry before; he had no idea that they ever did cry. He had,
indeed, never realised that grown-up persons had any active
histories at all, any histories in the sense in which he and Mary
had them. They were all a background, simply a background that blew
backwards and forwards like tapestry according to one's need of
them. His torture of Miss Jones had been founded on no sort of
realisation of her as a human being; she had been a silly old woman,
of course, but just as the battered weather-beaten Aunt Sally in the
garden was a silly old woman.

Her crying horrified, terrified, and disgusted him. It was all so
dreary, the horrible weather outside, the beginning of a cold in his
head, the schoolroom fire almost out, everyone's bad temper,
including his own, and this sudden horrible jumping-to-life of a
grown-up human being. She, meanwhile, was too deeply involved now in
the waters of her affliction to care very deeply who saw her or what
anyone said to her. She did feel dimly that she ought not to be
crying in front of a small boy of eight years old, and that it would
be better to hide herself in her bedroom, but she did not mind--she
COULD not mind--her neuralgia was too bad.

"It's the neuralgia in my head," she said in a muffled confused
voice. That he could understand. He also had pains in his head. He
drew closer to her, flinging a longing backward look at the door.
She went on in convulsed tones: