, as Emmy
unconsciously drew the overcoat away from him, one side of his body
perished with cold; and a dinner suit is not warm enough for traveling on a
frosty morning.

The thought of his dinner jacket reminded him of his puzzledom. What were
Emmy and himself doing in that galley of a railway carriage when they might
have been so much more comfortable in their own beds in Nunsmere? It was an
impenetrable mystery to which the sleeping girl who was causing him such
acute though cheerfully borne discomfort alone had the key. In vain did he
propound to himself the theory that such speculation betokened an
indelicate mind; in vain did he ask himself with unwonted severity what
business it was of his; in vain did he try to hitch his thoughts to Patent
Safety Railway Carriages, which were giving him a great deal of trouble; in
vain did he try to sleep. The question haunted him. So much so that when
Emmy awoke and rubbed her eyes, and in some confusion apologized for the
use to which she had put his shoulder, he was almost ashamed to look her in
the face.

"What are you going to do when you get to Victoria?" Emmy asked.

Septimus had not thought of it. "Go back to Nunsmere, I suppose, by the
next train--unless you want me?"

"No, I don't want you," said Emmy absently. "Why should I?"

And she gazed stonily at the suburban murk of the great city until they
reached Victoria. There, a dejected four-wheeled cab with a drooping horse
stood solitary on the rank--a depressing object. Emmy shivered at the
sight.

"I can't stand it. Drive me to my door. I know I'm a beast, Septimus dear,
but I am grateful. I am, really."

The cab received them into its musty interior and drove them through the
foggy brown of a London winter dawn. Unimaginable cheerlessness enveloped
them. The world wore an air of disgust at having to get up on such a
morning. The atmosphere for thirty yards around them was clear enough, with
the clearness of yellow consomme, but ahead it stood thick, like a puree of
bad vegetables. They passed through Belgravia, and the white-blinded houses
gave an impression of universal death, and the empty streets seemed waiting
for the doors to open and the mourners to issue forth. The cab, too, had
something of the sinister, in that it was haunted by the ghosts of a
fourpenny cigar and a sixpenny bottle of scent which continued a lugubrious
flirtation; and the windows rattled a _danse macabre_. At last it pulled up
at the