mmense mass of her black hair, rolled low in the nape of the columnar
neck and looped over the left ear. But Conroy had no eyes except for her
grave eyes.

'Listen now!' said she. 'I walk down a road, a white sandy road near the
sea. There are broken fences on either side, and Men come and look at me
over them.'

'Just men? Do they speak?'

'They try to. Their faces are all mildewy--eaten away,' and she hid her
face for an instant with her left hand. 'It's the Faces--the Faces!'

'Yes. Like my two hoots. I know.'

'Ah! But the place itself--the bareness--and the glitter and the salt
smells, and the wind blowing the sand! The Men run after me and I
run.... I know what's coming too. One of them touches me.'

'Yes! What comes then? We've both shirked that.'

'One awful shock--not palpitation, but shock, shock, shock!'

'As though your soul were being stopped--as you'd stop a finger-bowl
humming?' he said.

'Just that,' she answered. 'One's very soul--the soul that one lives
by--stopped. So!'

She drove her thumb deep into the arm-rest. 'And now,' she whined to
him, 'now that we've stirred each other up this way, mightn't we have
just one?'

'No,' said Conroy, shaking. 'Let's hold on. We're past'--he peered out
of the black windows--'Woking. There's the Necropolis. How long
till dawn?'

'Oh, cruel long yet. If one dozes for a minute, it catches one.'

'And how d'you find that this'--he tapped the palm of his glove--'helps
you?'

'It covers up the thing from being too real--if one takes enough--you
know. Only--only--one loses everything else. I've been no more than a
bogie-girl for two years. What would you give to be real again? This
lying's such a nuisance.'

'One must protect oneself--and there's one's mother to think of,' he
answered.

'True. I hope allowances are made for us somewhere. Our burden--can you
hear?--our burden is heavy enough.'

She rose, towering into the roof of the carriage. Conroy's ungentle grip
pulled her back.

'Now _you_ are foolish. Sit down,' said he.

'But the cruelty of it! Can't you see it? Don't you feel it? Let's take
one now--before I--'

'Sit down!' cried Conroy, and the sweat stood again on his forehead. He
had fought through a few nights, and had been defeated on more, and he
knew the rebellion that flares beyond control to exhaustion.

She smoothed her hair and dropped back, but for a while her head and
throat moved with the sickening motion of a captured wry