gainst the windows of the cab. Few people were about:
Hyde Park Corner was grey and deserted, umbrellas like black mushrooms
started here and there from the shining ground.

Victoria Station also had, on this afternoon, nothing beautiful to
offer. She found her way to her train, chose an empty carriage, sat in
her corner with her hands upon her lap, waited for the train to move.

People, grey people with white faces, hurried past her carriage. She
wondered whether they too had something in their hearts that made every
thought, every movement a danger.

Because the train would not move and because for the first time in all
these months she found herself without any occupation, she could not
hold thought at bay. She resisted, she tried to sweep her brain empty,
she surrendered. She, Lizzie Rand, always so fond of her self-discipline
and restraint, found control now slipping from her. Before she had met
Breton her duties, the skilful manipulation and arrangement of detail,
her work and her place as a worker, these had supplied her needs. Now
all those things were dust and ashes; high and lofty above them shone
that bright fire whose warmth and colour she had, for an instant, felt
and seen. What was life going to be, through all the years to come, if
she were never to recapture her tranquillity?

The train moved off and she sat there, her eyes bright and shining, her
little body stiff and resolute. Somewhere, a long way away, like a
rounded coloured cloud, hovered emotion--emotion that would break her
heart, would tear her to pieces and then perhaps build up for her a new
life. But her eyes now were dry and her heart was cold.

The train went whir-whack--whack-whir and the telegraph wires flew up,
hung, hesitated, were coming down, flew higher, then with a rush were
buried below the window, and with the noise and movement there danced
before her eyes the questions, "Does she love him?" "Does she love him?
Has she told him that she loves him? What will her husband do? Does she
love her husband?" And then, beyond that, "Why did she come and take
from me all that I had, she who had already so much?"

And then, most bitter of all, "Ah, but you never had him. She took
nothing from you. He never thought of you except as someone to whom he
could talk----"

She had no doubt that these weeks were intended for a crisis. Something
was going to happen at Seddon.... Something in which she was to have her
share. She felt as though