by the window to an anaemic-looking child of
seventeen, who had a habit of fainting during these long, summer
afternoons. Her own fingers were weary and she was conscious of an
increasing fatigue as the hours of toil passed on. No breath of air
came in from the sun-baked streets through the wide-flung windows. The
atmosphere of the long, low room, in which over a hundred girls closely
huddled together, were working, was sickly with the smell of cloth.
There was no conversation. The click of the machines seemed sometimes
to her partially dulled senses like the beating out of their human
lives. It seemed impossible that the afternoon would ever end. The
interval for tea came and passed--tea in tin cans, with thick bread
and melting butter. The respite was worse almost than the mechanical
toil. Julia's eyes ranged over the housetops, westwards. There was
another world of trees, flowers, and breezes; another world altogether.
She set her teeth. It was hard to have no place in it. A little time
ago she had been content, content even to suffer, because she was
toiling with these others whom she loved, and for whom, in her profound
pity, she poured out her life and her talents. And now there was a
change. Was it the spell of this cruel summer, she wondered, or was it
something else--some new desire in her incomplete life, something from
which for so many years she had been free? She let her thoughts,
momentarily, go adrift. She was back again in the cab, her fingers
clutching his arm, her heart thrilling with the wonderful passionate
splendour of those few hours. She recalled his looks, his words, his
little acts of kindness. She realised in those few moments how
completely he filled her thoughts. She began to tremble.

"Better have your place by the window back again, Miss Thurnbrein," the
girl at her side said suddenly. "You're looking like Clara, just before
she popped off. My, ain't it awful!"

Julia came back to herself and refused the child's offer.

"I shall be all right directly," she declared. "This weather can't last
much longer."

"If only the storm would come!" the child muttered, as she turned back
to her work.

If only the storm would come! Julia seemed to take these words with her
as she passed at last into the streets, at the stroke of the hour. It
was like that with her, too. There was something inside, something
around her heart, which was robbing her of her rest, haunting her
through the long, lonely n