London arrival of hers
the terminus had been a boiling cauldron of roar and rattle. Now
everything was dead and asleep. No trains moved; they slept, ancient
monsters, chained down with dirt and fog. Two or three porters crept
slothfully as though hypnotised. The face of the great clock, golden in
the dusk, dominated, like a heathen god, the scene. Maggie asked a
porter the way to the Station Hotel. He showed her; she climbed stairs,
pushed back swing doors, trod oil-clothed passages, and arrived at a
tired young woman who told her that she could have a room.

Arrived there, herself somnambulistic, she flung off her clothes, crept
into bed, and was instantly asleep.

Next morning she kept to her room; she went down the long dusty stairs
before one o'clock because she was hungry, and she discovered the
restaurant and had a meal there; but all the time she was expecting
Martin to appear. Every step seemed to be his, every voice to have an
echo of his tones. Then in the dusky afternoon she decided that she
would be cowardly no longer. She started off on her search for No. 13A
Lynton Street, King's Cross.

She searched through a strange blue opaque light which always
afterwards she recollected as accompanying her with mystery, as though
it followed her about deliberately veiling her from the rest of the
world. She felt different from them all; she found an omnibus that was
going to King's Cross, but when she was inside it and looked at the
people around her she felt of them all that they had no reality beside
the intensity of her own search. She, hot like a fiery coal, existed in
a land of filmy ghosts. She repeated to herself over and over, "No. 13A
Lynton Street, King's Cross."

She got out opposite the huge station and looked about her. She saw a
policeman and went across to him.

"Can you tell me where Lynton Street is, please?" she asked him.

He smiled. "Yes, miss. Down on your right, then first to your right
again."

She thanked him and wanted for a silly moment to remain with him. She
wanted to stand there where she was, on the island, she couldn't go
back, she was afraid to go forward. Then the moment left her and she
moved on. When she saw Lynton Street written up her heart gave a
strange little whirr and then tightened within herself, but she marched
on and found 13A. A dirty house, pots with ferns in the two grimy
windows, and the walls streaky with white stains against the grey. The
door was ajar and, p