the errand, nor shown in any way that he had observed her
extraordinary condition. He was silent, swinging his stick. She also was
silent. She could not have spoken, not even to murmur: "Where are you
taking me to?" They went forward as in an enchantment.

II

They were on the King's Road; and to the left were the high hotels and
houses, stretching east and west under the glare of the sun into
invisibility, and to the right was the shore, and the sea so bright that
the eye could scarcely rest on it. Both the upper and the lower
promenades were crowded with gay people surging in different directions.
The dusty roadway was full of carriages, and of the glint of the sun on
wheelspokes and horses' flanks, and of rolling, clear-cut shadows. The
shore was bordered with flags and masts and white and brown sails; and
in the white-and-green of billows harmlessly breaking could be seen the
yellow bodies of the bathers. A dozen bare-legged men got hold of a
yacht under sail with as many passengers on board, and pushed it
forcibly right down into the sea, and then up sprang its nose and it
heeled over and shot suddenly off, careering on the waves into the
offing where other yachts were sliding to and fro between the piers,
dominating errant fleets of rowboats. And the piers also were loaded
with excited humanity and radiant colour. And all the windows of all the
houses and hotels were open, and blowing with curtains and flowers and
hats. The whole town was enfevered.

Hilda thought, her heart still beating, but less noisily, "I scarcely
ever come here. I don't come here often enough." And she saw Sarah
Gailey rocking and sighing and rocking and shaking her head in the
mournful twilight of the basement in Preston Street. The contrasts of
existence struck her as magnificent, as superb. The very misery and
hopelessness of Sarah's isolation seemed romantic, splendid, touchingly
beautiful. And she thought, inexplicably: "Why am I here? Why am I not
at home in Turnhill? Why am I so different from what mother was? What am
I going to be and to do? This that I now am can't continue for ever."
She saw thousands of women with thousands of men. And, quite forgetting
that to the view of the multitude she was just as much as any of them
with a man (and a rather fine man, too!), she began to pity herself
because she was not with a man! She dreamed, in her extreme excitation,
of belonging absolutely to some man. And despite all her pride and