ad strong
feelings about the various railway termini. They are our gates to the
glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and
sunshine, to them, alas! we return. In Paddington all Cornwall is latent
and the remoter west; down the inclines of Liverpool Street lie fenlands
and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through the pylons of Euston;
Wessex behind the poised chaos of Waterloo. Italians realise this, as is
natural; those of them who are so unfortunate as to serve as waiters in
Berlin call the Anhalt Bahnhof the Stazione d'Italia, because by it they
must return to their homes. And he is a chilly Londoner who does not
endow his stations with some personality, and extend to them, however
shyly, the emotions of fear and love.

To Margaret--I hope that it will not set the reader against her--the
station of King's Cross had always suggested Infinity. Its very
situation--withdrawn a little behind the facile splendours of St.
Pancras--implied a comment on the materialism of life. Those two great
arches, colourless, indifferent, shouldering between them an unlovely
clock, were fit portals for some eternal adventure, whose issue might
be prosperous, but would certainly not be expressed in the ordinary
language of prosperity. If you think this ridiculous, remember that it
is not Margaret who is telling you about it; and let me hasten to add
that they were in plenty of time for the train; that Mrs. Munt, though
she took a second-class ticket, was put by the guard into a first (only
two "seconds" on the train, one smoking and the other babies--one cannot
be expected to travel with babies); and that Margaret, on her return to
Wickham Place, was confronted with the following telegram:

"All over. Wish I had never written. Tell no one--, HELEN."

But Aunt Juley was gone--gone irrevocably, and no power on earth could
stop her.

CHAPTER III

Most complacently did Mrs. Munt rehearse her mission. Her nieces were
independent young women, and it was not often that she was able to help
them. Emily's daughters had never been quite like other girls. They
had been left motherless when Tibby was born, when Helen was five and
Margaret herself but thirteen. It was before the passing of the Deceased
Wife's Sister Bill, so Mrs. Munt could without impropriety offer to
go and keep house at Wickham Place. But her brother-in-law, who was
peculiar and a German, had referred the question to Margaret, who with
the crud