however sweet the
lilac smelt-that never stopped! She turned away and passed out under the
arch, making for the station. The train of the wounded had just come in,
and she stood in the cheering crowd watching the ambulances run out.
Tears of excited emotion filled her eyes, and trickled down. Steady,
smooth, grey, one after the other they came gliding, with a little burst
of cheers greeting each one. All were gone now, and she could pass in.
She went to the buffet and got a large cup of coffee, and a bun. Then,
having noted the time of her early morning train, she sought the ladies'
waiting-room, and sitting down in a corner, took out her purse and
counted her money. Two pounds fifteen-enough to go to the hotel, if she
liked. But, without luggage--it was so conspicuous, and she could sleep
in this corner all right, if she wanted. What did girls do who had no
money, and no friends to go to? Tucked away in the corner of that empty,
heavy, varnished room, she seemed to see the cruelty and hardness of life
as she had never before seen it, not even when facing her confinement.
How lucky she had been, and was! Everyone was good to her. She had no
real want or dangers, to face. But, for women--yes, and men too--who had
no one to fall back on, nothing but their own hands and health and luck,
it must be awful. That girl whose eyes had scorched her--perhaps she had
no one--nothing. And people who were born ill, and the millions of poor
women, like those whom she had gone visiting with Gratian sometimes in
the poorer streets of her father's parish--for the first time she seemed
to really know and feel the sort of lives they led. And then, Leila's
face came back to her once more--Leila whom she had robbed. And the
worst of it was, that, alongside her remorseful sympathy, she felt a sort
of satisfaction. She could not help his not loving Leila, she could not
help it if he loved herself! And he did--she knew it! To feel that
anyone loved her was so comforting. But it was all awful! And she--the
cause of it! And yet--she had never done or said anything to attract
him. No! She could not have helped it.

She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes. And gradually there
came on her a cosey sensation, as if she were leaning up against someone
with her head tucked in against his shoulder, as she had so often leaned
as a child against her father, coming back from some long darkening drive
in Wales or Scotland.