Speaking little, they wandered among endless darkening streets, whence to
return to the light and traffic of the Euston Road seemed like coming
back to Heaven. At last, close again to her new home, Thyme said: "Why
should one bother? It's all a horrible great machine, trying to blot us
out; people are like insects when you put your thumb on them and smear
them on a book. I hate--I loathe it!"

"They might as well be healthy insects while they last," answered Martin.

Thyme faced round at him. "I shan't sleep tonight, Martin; get out my
bicycle for me."

Martin scrutinised her by the light of the street lamp. "All right," he
said; "I'll come too."

There are, say moralists, roads that lead to Hell, but it was on a road
that leads to Hampstead that the two young cyclists set forth towards
eleven o'clock. The difference between the character of the two
destinations was soon apparent, for whereas man taken in bulk had perhaps
made Hell, Hampstead had obviously been made by the upper classes. There
were trees and gardens, and instead of dark canals of sky banked by the
roofs of houses and hazed with the yellow scum of London lights, the
heavens spread out in a wide trembling pool. From that rampart of the
town, the Spaniard's Road, two plains lay exposed to left and right; the
scent of may-tree blossom had stolen up the hill; the rising moon clung
to a fir-tree bough. Over the country the far stars presided, and
sleep's dark wings were spread above the fields--silent, scarce
breathing, lay the body of the land. But to the south, where the town,
that restless head, was lying, the stars seemed to have fallen and were
sown in the thousand furrows of its great grey marsh, and from the dark
miasma of those streets there travelled up a rustle, a whisper, the far
allurement of some deathless dancer, dragging men to watch the swirl of
her black, spangled drapery, the gleam of her writhing limbs. Like the
song of the sea in a shell was the murmur of that witch of motion,
clasping to her the souls of men, drawing them down into a soul whom none
had ever known to rest.

Above the two young cousins, scudding along that ridge between the
country and the town, three thin white clouds trailed slowly towards the
west-like tired seabirds drifting exhausted far out from land on a sea
blue to blackness with unfathomable depth.

For an hour those two rode silently into the country.

"Have we come far enough?" Martin said at l