The road went uphill out of the village and Sea brightened his pace and I let him trot uphill. If it had been light I guessed there would have been a great sweep of country on our left. I could smell the fresh greenness of it, and the hint of meadow flowers closing their little faces for the night. On our right was the high shoulder of the hill. The hill of the South Downs, I thought. I considered for a moment where I was.

I could see a map in my mind’s eye now. I was heading north from Selsey, I had skirted the town of Chichester, and this road must surely be the London road. That accounted for the firmness of the going, and the wideness of the track which was broad enough for two passing carriages for much of the way. That reminded me to keep a careful look-out ahead of me for toll cottages. I did not want to waste my money paying for use of the road when a little ride cross-country would save me a penny. I watched out too for coaches before or behind me. I did not want to speak to anyone, I did not even want them to look on my face. I had a silly belief that my face was so set and so stony that anyone looking into my eyes would cry for me. That they would see at once that I was a dead person looking out of a live face. That there was no one behind my eyes and my mouth and my face at all. I practised a smile into the darkness and found that my lips could curve and my face rise with no difficulty and with no difference to the weight of ice inside me. I even tried a little laugh, alone into the darkness of the fields on the far side of the village. It sounded eerie, and Sea’s ears went back flat and he increased his pace.

I checked him. I was so tired I did not think I could bear the jolting of his trot, and I felt as if I would never canter again. I could hardly remember the girl who used to vault on to the back of a cantering horse and dance with a hoop and a skipping rope. She seemed like a hopeful little child to me now, and I wondered idly why they had worked her so hard. Her and her poor little sister…I broke off my thoughts. It was odd. I was speaking and feeling as if I were an old woman. An old woman tired and ready for death.

The girl who had played in the sea this morning was a lifetime away from me now. I thought that I was more like the woman who had seen the wagon go away from her in that awful dream of the storm, and known that she would never see her baby again. The woman who had called after the wagon, ‘Her name is Sarah…’ I felt like that woman now. I felt like any woman feels when she has lost the love and the saviour of her life. Old. Sick at heart. Ready for her own death.