ousies and annoy a
number of women, which, however, she would endeavour to overcome by
giving back to them the several lovers whom she did not want for
herself.

The life in this picture would be hers if she took the three o'clock
train and went to Berkeley Square. The life in the other picture would
be hers if she remained in Dulwich.

Only one more hour remained between her and the moment when she would be
getting into the train, and on going out of the gallery her senses all
seemed awake at the same moment; she saw and felt and heard with equal
distinctness, and she seemed to be walking automatically, to be moving
forward as if on wheels. She met a friend on her way home, but it was
like talking to one across a river or gulf; she wondered what she had
said, and hardly heard, on account of the tumult within her, what was
being said to her. When she got home, she noticed that she did not take
off her hat; and she ate her lunch without tasting it. Her thoughts were
loud as the clock which ticked out the last minutes she was to remain at
home, and trying not to hear them, she turned to the Monna Lisa,
wondering what Owen meant when he had said that the hesitating smile in
the picture was like her smile. Her thoughts ran on ticking in her brain
like the clock in the corner of a room, and though she would have given
anything to stop thinking, she could not.

Every moment the agony of anxiety and nervousness increased, and it was
almost a relief when the clock pointed to the time when she would have
to go to the station. She looked round the room, a great despair mounted
into her eyes, and she walked quickly out of the house. As she went down
the street she tried to think that she was going to Owen to tell him she
had told her father that she was resolved to give him up. It seemed no
longer difficult to do this, for, on looking into her mind, she could
discover neither desire nor love, nor any wish to see him. She was only
conscious of a nervous agitation which she could not control, and
through this waking nightmare she walked steadily, thinking with
extraordinary clearness.

In the railway carriage the passengers noticed her pallor, and they
wondered what her trouble was, and at Victoria the omnibus conductor
just saved her from being run over. The omnibus jogged on, stopping now
and then for people to get in and out, and Evelyn wondered at the
extraordinary mechanism of life, and she took note of everyone's
peculiar