He had taken a ticket for the first stop, and when the train slowed
down for the station of that neighbouring city, he had his head out of
the window. An old gentleman with a noisy cold protested. Could he not
wait until the train actually stopped? Charles was afraid he could not
be so obliging. He assured the old gentleman that the night was mild.
'And I'm keeping a good deal of the draught out,' he said pleasantly.
He saw a small hand on the door of the next compartment, then the
sleeve of a black coat as Henrietta stretched for the handle, and he
said to himself, 'She was in mourning for her mother.' He was proud of
remembering that; he had a sense of nearness and a slow suspicion that
hitherto he had not sufficiently considered her. In their past
intercourse he had been trying to stamp his own thoughts on her mind,
but now it seemed that something of her, more real than her physical
beauty, was being impressed on him. He wanted to know what she was
feeling, not in regard to him, but in regard, for instance, to that
dead mother, and why she ran away like this, in her old clothes and
with the little bag.
She was out of the train: she had descended the steps to the roadway
and there she looked about her, hesitating. Cabmen hailed her but,
ignoring them and crossing the tramlines, she began to walk slowly up
a dull street where cards in the house windows told of lodgings to be
let. If she knocked at one of these doors, what was he to do? But she
did not look at the houses: her head was drooping a little, her feet
moved reluctantly, she was no longer eager and her bag was heavy
again, she had changed it from the right to the left hand, and then,
unexpectedly, she quickened her pace.
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