a
moment, and the march was resumed. A clock at one of these stations said
a quarter to two.

Then the name of Hornsey quickened her apprehensive heart. As she
descended nervously from the train, her trunk was shot out from the
guard's van behind. She went and stood over it, until the last of a
series of kindly porters came along and touched his cap. When she asked
for a cab, he seemed doubtful whether a cab was available, and looked
uncertainly along the immense empty platform and across at other
platforms. The train had wandered away. She strove momentarily to
understand the reason of these great sleeping stations; but fatigue,
emotional and physical, had robbed her of all intelligent curiosity in
the phenomena of the mysterious and formidable city.

Presently the porter threw the trunk on his shoulder and she trudged
after him up steps and over an iron bridge and down steps; and an
express whizzed like a flying shell through the station and vanished.
And at a wicket, in a ragged road, there actually stood a cab and a
skeleton of a horse between the shafts. The driver bounced up,
enheartened at sight of the trunk and the inexperienced, timid girl; but
the horse did not stir in its crooked coma.

"What address, miss?" asked the cabman.

"Cedars House, Harringay Park Road."

The cabman paused in intense thought, and after a few seconds responded
cheerfully: "Yes, miss."

The porter touched his cap for threepence. The lashed horse plunged
forward. Hilda leaned back in the creaking and depraved vehicle, and
sighed, "So this is their London!"

She found herself travelling in the direction from which she had come,
parallel to the railway, down the longest street that she had ever seen.
On her left were ten thousand small new houses, all alike. On her right
were broken patches of similar houses, interspersed with fragments of
green field and views of the arches of the railway; the conception of
the horrible patience which had gone to the construction of these
endless, endless arches made her feel sick.

The cab turned into another road, and another; and then stopped. She saw
the words "Cedars House" on a gateway. She could not open the door of
the cab. The cabman opened it.

"Blinds down here, miss!" he said, with appropriate mournfulness.

It seemed a rather large house; and every blind was drawn. Had the
incredible occurred, then? Had this disaster befallen just her, of all
the young women in the world?

Sh