te of herself. In vain she repeated
that the book was a silly book. She really believed that it was silly,
but she knew also that there was an aspect of it which was not silly.
She was reminded by it that she had found no solution of the problem
which had distracted her in Hornsey. 'What is your present condition?'
Her present condition was still that of a weakling and a coward who had
sunk down inertly before the great problem of sin. And now, in the
growing strength of her moral convalescence, she was raising her eyes
again to meet the problem. Her future seemed to be bound up with the
problem. As she breasted the top of the Sytch under the invisible
lowering clouds, with her new, adored friend by her side, and the
despised but powerful book in her hand, she mused in an ambiguous
reverie upon her situation, dogged by the problem which alone was
accompanying her out of the past into the future. Her reverie was shot
through by piercing needles of regret for her mother; and even with the
touch of Janet's arm against her own in the darkness she had sharp
realizations of her extreme solitude in the world. Withal, the sense of
life was precious and beautiful. She was not happy; but she was filled
with the mysterious vital elation which surpasses happiness.

III

They descended gently into Bursley, crossing the top of St. Luke's
Square and turning eastwards into Market Square, ruled by the sombre and
massive Town Hall in whose high tower an illuminated dial shone like a
topaz. To Hilda, this nocturnal entry into Bursley had the romance of an
entry into a town friendly but strange and recondite. During the few
days of her stay with the Orgreaves in the suburb of Bleakridge, she had
scarcely gone into the town once. She had never seen it at night. In the
old Turnhill days she had come over to Bursley occasionally with her
mother; but to shoppers from Turnhill, Bursley meant St. Luke's Square
and not a yard beyond.

Now the girls arrived at the commencement of the steam-car track, where
a huge engine and tram were waiting, and as they turned another corner,
the long perspective of Trafalgar Road, rising with its double row of
lamps towards fashionable Bleakridge, was revealed to Hilda. She
thought, naturally, that every other part of the Five Towns was more
impressive and more important than the poor little outskirt, Turnhill,
of her birth. In Turnhill there was no thoroughfare to compare with
Trafalgar Road, and no fashio