He realized that she, too, might be unhappy, and it seemed that it was
he who ought to comfort her, he who could do it.
He had to put a drag on his steps as they tried to hurry after her,
through the main street of Upper Radstowe, through another darker one
where there were fewer people and he had to exercise more care, and so
past the big square where tall old houses looked at each other across
an enclosure of trees, down to a broad street where tramcars rushed
and rattled. She boarded one of these and went inside. Pulling his hat
farther over his face in the erroneous belief that he would be the
less noticeable, he ascended to the top, to crane his head over the
side at every stopping-place lest Henrietta should get off; but there
was no sign of her until they reached that strange place in the middle
of the city where the harbour ran into the streets and the funnels and
masts of ships mingled with the roofs of houses. This was the spot
where, round a big triangle of paving, tramcars came and went in every
direction, and here everybody must alight.
The streets were brilliant with electricity; electric signs popped
magically with many-coloured lights on the front of a music hall where
an audience was already gathering for the first performance, on
public-houses, on the big red warehouses on the quay. The lighted
tramcars with passengers inside looked like magic-lantern slides, and
amid all the people using the triangle as a promenade or hurrying here
and there on business, the newsboys shouting and the general bustle,
Charles did not know whether to be more afraid of losing Henrietta or
colliding with her.
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