n all day long.
It made her almost dizzy, but when she turned for relief to the land,
the promenade and the little town itself seemed only like leaves swept
together by chance for a moment on the edge of a torrent. A horrid
sense of the shortness of life assailed Caroline now, as it will
sometimes assail young people when they are dispirited. She felt that
cold breath from the immense spaces of eternity to which the young are
still sensitive.

But the week would soon be over---- She consoled herself by that
thought as she sat before the little window knitting a woollen coat to
wear when she went to office in Flodmouth. Every now and then she
glanced drearily at the grey waves with the white crests, coming on and
on---- It was a rotten world, and she didn't care. What was the good
of it all, anyway?

Then a subscriber passed through to the promenade; but her reply to his
remark about the weather was as mechanical as her release of the iron
turnstile. Directly he was gone she looked out to sea again, thinking
now of a girl who had been drowned farther along the coast not long
before. Well, she only wished the waves would come over the promenade
and take her with them, then she'd be out of it all.

But she did not mean that really; because certain qualities she
inherited from her sturdy Yorkshire ancestors would always prevent her
from choosing the way of the neurotic. She would be brave enough to
live out her life, though she had ceased to expect happiness as a right.

A sharp gust of rain on the window made her look down the promenade.
Now the stray figures would come scurrying through again to their homes
or lodgings, and she automatically prepared to release the turnstile
quickly to oblige people in haste. Then, with a little leap of the
pulses, she saw Aunt Creddle. It was Aunt Creddle, out at half-past
eleven on baking-day, with her print, working dress ballooning under
that old coat and the hair straggling over her face. Caroline jumped
up and ran out of the pay-box, her knitting still in her hand, the
shower of cold, sharp drops driving across her.

"What's the matter?" she cried. "Has one of the children got hurt?"

Mrs. Creddle so panted for breath that she could only sign with a
toil-scarred hand for Caroline to go back into shelter, but on reaching
a little protection from the wind she managed to gasp out:

"Nobody's ill. There's nothing the matter. Not in a manner of
speaking. Can I com