ay that.

"Mimm--my!"

Suddenly she longed to be gone--to have it all over and be gone.

She heard the kak-kak of Harriett's wooden heeled slippers across the
tiled hall. She glanced down the well of the staircase. Harriett was
mightily swinging the bell, scattering a little spray of notes at each
end of her swing.

With a frightened face Miriam crept back up the stairs. Violently
slamming the bedroom door, "I'm a-comin'--I'm a-comin'," she shouted and
ran downstairs.

CHAPTER II

1

The crossing was over. They were arriving. The movement of the little
steamer that had collected the passengers from the packet-boat drove the
raw air against Miriam's face. In her tired brain the grey river and
the flat misty shores slid constantly into a vision of the gaslit
dining-room at home... the large clear glowing fire, the sounds of the
family voices. Every effort to obliterate the picture brought back again
the moment that had come at the dinner-table as they all sat silent for
an instant with downcast eyes and she had suddenly longed to go on for
ever just sitting there with them all.

Now, in the boat she wanted to be free for the strange grey river and
the grey shores. But the home scenes recurred relentlessly. Again and
again she went through the last moments... the goodbyes, the unexpected
convulsive force of her mother's arms, her own dreadful inability to
give any answering embrace. She could not remember saying a single word.
There had been a feeling that came like a tide carrying her away. Eager
and dumb and remorseful she had gone out of the house and into the cab
with Sarah, and then had come the long sitting in the loop-line train...
"talk about something"... Sarah sitting opposite and her unchanged voice
saying "What shall we talk about?" And then a long waiting, and the
brown leather strap swinging against the yellow grained door, the smell
of dust and the dirty wooden flooring, with the noise of the wheels
underneath going to the swinging tune of one of Heller's "Sleepless
Nights." The train had made her sway with its movements. How still Sarah
seemed to sit, fixed in the old life. Nothing had come but strange cruel
emotions.

After the suburban train nothing was distinct until the warm snowflakes
were drifting against her face through the cold darkness on Harwich
quay. Then, after what seemed like a great loop of time spent going
helplessly up a gangway towards "the world" she had stood, fa