dogs were barking; the
wandering dealer who pitched his earthenware van at the corner was
ringing his plates together to prove them indestructible; old Madge
Campion, who sold gooseberry-tarts and hot mutton-pies on her board
under an awning supported by clothes-props, was surrounded by a shoal
of children, as happy as the sunshine; the man with the panorama was
exhibiting, at one halfpenny a head, the murder of Lord William Russell
to a string of boys and girls who mounted the stool in turn to look
through the glasses; and the cheapjack was expatiating on the merits of
cutlery, pictures, fire-irons, and proving that his brass candlestick,
honestly-worth-ten-shillings-but-obtainable-at-one-and-four-pence-
because-he-really-could-not-cart-it-about-any-longer answered the
double purpose of a candlestick and burglar-alarm by reason of the
tremendous click of the spring, which anybody might--if they
liked--mistake for a pistol.

Through all the crowd Miriam walked unsympathetic. She cursed the
constitution with which she was born. She wished she had been endowed
with that same blessed thoughtlessness, and that she could be taken out
of herself with an interest in pigs, pie-dishes, and Cowfold affairs
generally. She went on up to her favourite resting-place; everything
was so still, and her eye wandered over the illimitable distance but
without pleasure. She recollected that she had an engagement; that two
cousins of her husband were coming to tea, and she slowly returned. At
half-past five they appeared. They chattered away merrily with Mr.
Farrow, who was as lively as they were, until by degrees Miriam's
silence began to operate, and they grew dull. Tea being over, she
managed to escape, and as she went upstairs she heard the laughter
recommence, for it was she who had suppressed it. Lying down in her
room overhead, the noise continued, and it came into her mind that
wherever she went she cast a cold shadow. "They must wish me dead,"
she thought.

She had been married so short a time; to what a dreary length the
future stretched before her, and she did not love the man she had
chosen, as she understood love. How was life to be lived? She did not
reproach herself. If she could have done that, if she could have
accused herself of deliberate self-betrayal, it would have been better;
but she seemed to have been blindfolded, and led by some unknown force
into the position in which she found herself.

For some d