y freshly the mood of our departure from London, the
platform of Charing Cross with the big illuminated clock overhead, the
bustle of porters and passengers with luggage, the shouting of newsboys
and boys with flowers and sweets, and the groups of friends seeing
travellers off by the boat train. Isabel sat very quiet and still in the
compartment, and I stood upon the platform with the door open, with
a curious reluctance to take the last step that should sever me from
London's ground. I showed our tickets, and bought a handful of red roses
for her. At last came the guards crying: "Take your seats," and I got
in and closed the door on me. We had, thank Heaven! a compartment to
ourselves. I let down the window and stared out.

There was a bustle of final adieux on the platform, a cry of "Stand
away, please, stand away!" and the train was gliding slowly and smoothly
out of the station.

I looked out upon the river as the train rumbled with slowly gathering
pace across the bridge, and the bobbing black heads of the pedestrians
in the footway, and the curve of the river and the glowing great hotels,
and the lights and reflections and blacknesses of that old, familiar
spectacle. Then with a common thought, we turned our eyes westward to
where the pinnacles of Westminster and the shining clock tower rose hard
and clear against the still, luminous sky.

"They'll be in Committee on the Reformatory Bill to-night," I said, a
little stupidly.

"And so," I added, "good-bye to London!"

We said no more, but watched the south-side streets below--bright gleams
of lights and movement, and the dark, dim, monstrous shapes of houses
and factories. We ran through Waterloo Station, London Bridge, New
Cross, St. John's. We said never a word. It seemed to me that for a time
we had exhausted our emotions. We had escaped, we had cut our knot,
we had accepted the last penalty of that headlong return of mine from
Chicago a year and a half ago. That was all settled. That harvest of
feelings we had reaped. I thought now only of London, of London as the
symbol of all we were leaving and all we had lost in the world. I felt
nothing now but an enormous and overwhelming regret....

The train swayed and rattled on its way. We ran through old Bromstead,
where once I had played with cities and armies on the nursery floor. The
sprawling suburbs with their scattered lights gave way to dim tree-set
country under a cloud-veiled, intermittently shining mo