So the years went by, and such involvements as came along never satisfied me as being quite right enough either for one thing or the other. And one day, with jarring abruptness, I was twenty-seven, and the little inner voice stopped jeering and sneering at every man I met and began to whimper and bleat. ‘Is it going on forever, this lonely-nights policy? So supposing you never marry, and if you go on being so fussy you probably never will – are there no cakes and ale?’ And I began to be conscious of my unnatural state, and cry in the night sometimes for no real reason except that I wanted a man beside me – any man at all, I sometimes thought, and the little voice which had been so snooty before, now held its peace on the subject.