Once more she slept, and once more the bus stopped and she woke frightened, and Jim brought her again to a restaurant and more coffee. Her tooth came alive then, and with one hand pressing her cheek she searched through the pockets of her coat and then through her pocketbook until she found the little bottle of codeine pills and she took two while Jim watched her.

She was finishing her coffee when she heard the sound of the bus motor and she started up suddenly, hurrying, and with Jim holding her arm she fled back into the dark shelter of her seat. The bus was moving forward when she realized that she had left her bottle of codeine pills sitting on the table in the restaurant and now she was at the mercy of her tooth. For a minute she stared back at the lights of the restaurant through the bus window and then she put her head on Jim’s shoulder and he was saying as she fell asleep, ‘The sand is so white it looks like snow, but it’s hot, even at night it’s hot under your feet.’

Then they stopped for the last time, and Jim brought her out of the bus and they stood for a minute in New York together. A woman passing them in the station said to the man following her with suitcases, ‘We’re just on time, it’s five-fifteen.’

‘I’m going to the dentist,’ she said to Jim.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ll watch out for you.’

He went away, although she did not see him go. She thought to watch for his blue suit going through the door, but there was nothing.

I ought to have thanked him, she thought stupidly, and went slowly into the station restaurant, where she ordered coffee again. The counter man looked at her with the worn sympathy of one who has spent a long night watching people get off and on buses. ‘Sleepy?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said.

She discovered after a while that the bus station joined Pennsylvania Terminal and she was able to get into the main waiting-room and find a seat on one of the benches by the time she fell asleep again.

Then someone shook her rudely by the shoulder and said, ‘What train you taking, lady, it’s nearly seven.’ She sat up and saw her pocketbook on her lap, her feet neatly crossed, a clock glaring into her face. She said, ‘Thank you,’ and got up and walked blindly past the benches and got on to the escalator. Someone got on immediately behind her and touched her arm; she turned and it was Jim. ‘The grass is so green and so soft,’ he said, smiling, ‘and the water of the river is so cool.’