e a sinister manifestation of that lack of spiritual sinew which
had made her succumb to a bad man and handicap Richard with
illegitimacy. She prefigured her swarthy and obese.

She got out and stood quite still on the platform, as she had been told
to do. The station was fine, with its immense windless vaults through
which the engine smoke rose slowly through discoloured light and
tarnished darkness. She liked the people, who all looked darkly dressed
and meek as they hurried along into the layer of shadow that lay along
the ground, and who seemed to be seeking so urgently for cabs and
porters because their meagre lives had convinced them that here was
never enough of anything to go round. If she and her mother had ever
come to London on the trip they had always planned, she would have been
swinging off now to look for a taxi, just like a man; and when she came
back her mother would have said, "Why, Ellen, I never would have thought
you could have got one so quickly." Well, that would not happen now.
She would have grieved over it; but a train far down the line pulled out
of the station and disclosed a knot of red and green signal lights that
warmed the eye and thence the heart as jewels do, and at that she was as
happy as if she were turning over private jewels that she could wear on
her body and secrete in her own casket. She was absorbed in the sight
when she heard a checked soft exclamation, and turning about had the
illusion that she looked into Richard's eyes.

"I am Richard's mother. You are Richard's wife?"

Ellen repeated, "I am Richard's wife," feeling distressed that she had
said it, since they were not yet married, but aware that to correct it
would be trivial.

It was strange to look down instead of up at those dark eyes, those
brows which lay straight black bars save for that slight piratical
twist, with no intervening arch between them and the dusky eyelids. It
was strange to hear Richard's voice coming from a figure blurred with
soft, rich, feminine clothes. It was strange to see her passing through
just such a moment of impeded tenderness as Richard often underwent.
Plainly she wanted to kiss Ellen, but was prevented by an intense
physical reserve, and did not want to shake hands, since that was
inadequate, and this conflict gave her for a minute a stiff queerness of
attitude. She compromised by taking Ellen's left hand in her own left
hand, and giving it what was evidently a sincere, but not sponta