III

When Constance came to bed, half an hour later, Sophia was already
in bed. The room was fairly spacious. It had been the girls'
retreat and fortress since their earliest years. Its features
seemed to them as natural and unalterable as the features of a
cave to a cave-dweller. It had been repapered twice in their
lives, and each papering stood out in their memories like an
epoch; a third epoch was due to the replacing of a drugget by a
resplendent old carpet degraded from the drawing-room. There was
only one bed, the bedstead being of painted iron; they never
interfered with each other in that bed, sleeping with a detachment
as perfect as if they had slept on opposite sides of St. Luke's
Square; yet if Constance had one night lain down on the half near
the window instead of on the half near the door, the secret nature
of the universe would have seemed to be altered. The small fire-
grate was filled with a mass of shavings of silver paper; now the
rare illnesses which they had suffered were recalled chiefly as
periods when that silver paper was crammed into a large slipper-
case which hung by the mantelpiece, and a fire of coals
unnaturally reigned in its place--the silver paper was part of the
order of the world. The sash of the window would not work quite
properly, owing to a slight subsidence in the wall, and even when
the window was fastened there was always a narrow slit to the left
hand between the window and its frame; through this slit came
draughts, and thus very keen frosts were remembered by the nights
when Mrs. Baines caused the sash to be forced and kept at its full
height by means of wedges--the slit of exposure was part of the
order of the world.