The train drew up at a station. Instantly she felt blinded, deafened, intimidated by the harshness of being brought to a halt. When the train went on she wondered why there should be this sudden chill in the air that blew on her from the open window. A sweat of fear had broken out on 69her forehead. She lit a cigarette and felt sick. How could she possibly recapture that sense of fearless tranquillity, knowing that there would be nine more stops before the terminus, nine more buffeting arrests in the process of being conveyed towards her love? After the fifth stop came the cemetery, the new end first, dabbed with bunches of marigolds and bright asters over the remembered dead, then the older part, interminable, where trees thickened their shade over a density of old-fashioned gravestones, urns and obelisks and broken pillars and altar tombs caged in iron railings. Her eye was caught by a heap of yellow clay. The shade badged it, it looked like a tiger lying among the graves, and was the raw earth banked up where a family pit had been reopened for some delaying grave-fellow. To protect herself against omen-watching, she opened her Times and read the leading articles through the remainder of the journey.

‘Taxi, Miss?’

This was something she had not expected, for she was not of the taxi class. The porter’s voice was cordial, his glance rested on her with approval and confidence, as though he were pleased with his discernment in recognizing her as some one who would not be swallowed up in the underground with the other passengers. Her spirits leaped up: it had not occurred to her to take a taxi, but now she would. The porter conveyed her to the taxi-rank, slammed the door and gave her destination, and it was like a foretaste of how, for the rest of her life, she would have Robin to take care of her. On one of her impulses she leaned from 70the taxi window to have another look at this proxy Robin. He was already walking away, but she caught his attention and smiled at him. He shouted, ‘Cheerio!’ encouragingly. For he had got into his head that the poor little thing was going to the dentist, though her teeth, revealed in her easy smile, looked too pretty to hurt. The taxi turned out of the forecourt and was immediately halted by a red light. But this delay, though it cost money and would inevitably be followed by more such delays, did not buffet her nerves as the halts of the train had done. She felt the moment embrace her. Here she was in the heart of London, cocked up in a taxi and on her way to meet Robin. It was all perfectly simple and straightforward, just as Robin had said. The stream of traffic was released, the taxi slipped in front of a van, the road seemed to gain width as the traffic gained speed, and already the six-month load of care was beginning to loosen from off her shoulders. For only now was it beginning to be simple and straightforward. To meet that interesting Mr Jones again, to please him and yet not seem to pursue him, to solace his despondencies, to contain the astounding glory that he might love her, to make sure of him if only to renounce him (by then she knew he was married), to cleave to him only and keep it from everyone else, as it practically said in the marriage service, to apply for a passport, to walk out of Holmeden carrying a suitcase, never to lose her head, or be found weeping, or be seen smiling at private thoughts, or talk in her sleep, or be run over by a bus, and all the time to reflect incessantly on the hazards to which love and the beloved are exposed—though it had been next 71to nothing in comparison with what she would gladly suffer for Robin’s sake, it had been remarkably like walking on the slack rope in very tight shoes. One deserved a taxi ride after all that.