herself walking in memory along a street in Edinburgh towards
a sunset which patterned the west with sweeping lines of little golden
feathers as if some vain angel, forbidden to peacock it in heaven, had
come to show his wings to earth. On the other side, turned to the colour
of a Gloire de Dijon rose, towered the height of the MacEwan Hall, that
Byzantine pile which she always thought had an air as if it were
remembering beautiful music that had been played within it at so many
concerts; and at its base staggered a quarrelling man and woman. The
woman was not young and wore a man's cloth cap and a full, long, filthy
skirt. They were moving sideways along the empty pavement about a yard
apart, facing one another, shouting and making threatening gestures
across the gap. At last they stopped, put their drink-ulcerated faces
close together, and vomited coarse cries at one another; and she had
looked up at the pale golden stone that was remembering music, and at
the bright golden sky that was promising that there was more than
terrestrial music, as one might look at well-bred friends after some
boor had stained some pleasant occasion with his ill manners. Then she
had been sixteen. Now she was seventeen, and she and a man were shouting
across a space. Could it be that vileness was not a state which one
could choose or refuse to enter, but a phase through which, being human,
one must pass? If that were so, life was too horrible. She cried out
through his vehemence: "No, I'm not going to marry you."

"Don't be stupid. You're being exactly like all other women, silly and
capricious. Go and put your things on."

"I will not. I'm going away."

"Don't talk nonsense! Where are you going?"

"Back to Edinburgh." She made a hard line of her trembling mouth. "My
mind's made up."

He made a sound that expressed pure exasperation untouched with
tenderness, and his eyes darted about her face in avaricious
appraisement of this property that was trying to detach itself from him
with a display of free will that might not be tolerated in property. She
could see him resolving to take it lightly, and thought to herself:
"Maybe it's just as well that it's to be broken off, for I doubt I'm too
clever for marriage. I would read him like a book and, considering
what's in him"--a convulsion of rage shook her--"he'd be annoyed at
that."

He had been saying with deliberate flippancy: "Oh, you silly little
Ellen," but at that convulsion a chan