That evening, perhaps, his whole being tingled with half-conscious desires for love, and adventure, and knowledge, and achievement.

On another day he might have gone to a billiard match at his club, or have hung round the corner for a girl who smiled at him as he left the factory, or might have sat on his bed and ground at a chapter of Marx or Hobson.

But this evening he saw his life as a whole.
The way of living that had been implied in the religious lessons at school seemed strangely irrelevant; but still he felt humble, and kind, and anxious for guidance.

Should he aim at marriage, and if so should he have children at once or at all?
If he did not marry, could he avoid self-contempt and disease?
Should he face the life of a socialist organiser, with its strain and uncertainty, and the continual possibility of disillusionment?
Should he fill up every evening with technical classes, and postpone his ideals until he had become rich?
And if he became rich what should he do with his money?
Meanwhile, there was the urgent impulse to walk and think; but where should he walk to, and with whom?
The young schoolmistress, in her bed-sitting-room a few streets off, was in no better case.

She and a friend sat late last night, agreeing that the life they were living was no real life at all; but what was the alternative?
Had the 'home duties' to which her High Church sister devoted herself with devastating self-sacrifice any more meaning?
Ought she, with her eyes open, and without much hope of spontaneous love, to enter into the childless 'modern' marriage which alone seemed possible for her?
Ought she to spend herself in a reckless campaign for the suffrage?
Meanwhile, she had had her tea, her eyes were too tired to read, and what on earth should she do till bedtime?
Such moments of clear self-questioning were of course rare, but the nerve-fretting problems always existed.