Why, then, is she walking rather than running? Why is she moving at all? If things are so bad—so dark and desperate—why, in this hour when heaven is falling, is she going shopping? Because shopping, certainly, is what she now intends, as she rounds the corner into the garish celebration of Oxford Circus. Not that she knows yet what she is shopping for, only that she has decided to shop, and in that decision is something unbending and determined.