handkerchief, a hand-mirror, a paper packet of
sweets, a small pair of scissors, and a shabby brown purse upon the
station-floor. She was greatly confused when an old gentleman helped
her to pick them up. The little mirror was broken.

"Oh! it's bad luck!" she cried, staring distressfully at the old man.
He smiled, and would have certainly been very agreeable to her had not
Aunt Anne, who had been finding their boxes and securing a cab, arrived
and taken Maggie away. "You shouldn't speak to strange gentlemen,
dear," said Aunt Anne.

But Maggie did not listen. It was characteristic of Anne Cardinal that
she should secure the only four-wheeler in the station, rejecting the
taxi-cabs that waited in rows for her pleasure. Had Maggie only known,
her aunt's choice was eloquent of their future life together. But
Maggie did not know and did not care. Her excitement was intense. That
old St. Dreot life had already swung so far behind her that it was like
a fantastic dream; as they rumbled through the streets, the cries, the
smells, the lights seemed arranged especially for her. She could not
believe that they had all been, just like this, before her arrival. As
with everything, she was busy imagining the World behind this display,
the invisible Circle inside the circle that she saw.

They came into the Strand, and the masses of moving people seemed to
her like somnambulists walking without reason or purpose. She felt as
though there would suddenly come a great hole in the middle of the
street into which the cab would tumble. The noise seemed to her country
ears deafening, and when, suddenly, the lighted letters of some
advertisement flashed out gigantic against the sky, she gave a little
scream. She puzzled her aunt by saying:

"But it isn't really like this, is it?"

To which Aunt Anne could only say:

"You're hungry and tired, dear, I expect."

With one last outrending scream the whole world seemed to fling itself
at the window, open because Aunt Anne thought the cab "had a smell."
"Oosh--O O S H." "OOSH." ... Maggie drew back as though she expected
some one to leap in upon them. Then, with that marvellous and ironical
gift of contrast that is London's secret, they were suddenly driven
into the sleepiest quiet; they stumbled up a street that was like a
cave for misty darkness and muffled echoes. The cab's wheels made a
riotous clatter.

A man posting a letter in a pillar-box was the only figure in the
street. The st