the future held
for her! And now around his tall mysterious figure not only her own
fate but that of every one else seemed to hang. Her aunts, Amy, Miss
Pyncheon, Miss Avies, Thurston, that strange girl at the meeting, with
them all his destiny was involved and they with his.

As the day advanced and the silver fog blew in little gusts about the
house, making now this corner now that obscure, drifting, so that
suddenly, when the door opened, the whole passage seemed full of smoke,
clearing, for a moment, in the street below, showing lamp-posts and
pavements and windows, and then blowing down again and once more hiding
the world, she felt, in spite of herself, that she was playing a part
in some malignant dream. "It can't be like this really," she told
herself. "If I were to go to tea now with Mrs. Mark and sit in her
pretty drawing-room and talk to that clergyman I wouldn't believe a
word of it." And yet it was true enough, her share in it. As the
afternoon advanced her sensations were very similar to those that she
had had when about to visit the St. Dreot's dentist, a fearsome man
with red hair and hands like a dog's paws. She saw him now standing
over her as she sat trembling in the chair, a miserable little figure
in a short untidy frock. She used to repeat to herself then what Uncle
Mathew had once told her: "This time next year you'll have forgotten
all about this," but when it was a question of facing the immensities
of the Last Day that consolation was strangely inapt. It was dusk very
early and she longed for Martha to bring the lamp.

At last it came and tea and Aunt Elizabeth. Aunt Anne had not appeared
all day. Then long dreary hours followed until supper, and after that
hours again until ten o'clock.

She had not been certain, all this time, whether the aunts meant to
take her to the service with them. She had supposed that her
introduction to the meeting at Miss Avies's meant that they intended to
include her in this too, but now, as the evening advanced, in a fit of
nervous terror she prayed within herself that they would not take her.
If the end of the world were coming she would like to meet it in her
bed. To go out into those streets and that ugly unfriendly Chapel was a
horrible thing to do. If this were to be the end of the world how she
did wish that she might have been allowed to know nothing about it. And
those others--Miss Pyncheon and the rest who devoutly believed in the
event--how were the