None of my companions spoke; none gave me more than a passing glance. It
was uncanny.

Still, the fundamental, cardinal quality of my adventure remained
prominent in my being, and it gave me countenance among these taciturn,
musing workgirls, who were always at grips with the realities of life.
'Ah,' I thought, 'you little know what I know! I may appear a butterfly,
but I have learnt the secret meaning of existence. I am above you, beyond
you, by my experience, and by my terrible situation, and by the turmoil
in my heart!' And then, quite suddenly, I reflected that they probably
knew all that I knew, that some of them might have forgotten more than I
had ever learnt. I remembered an absorbing correspondence about the
manners of the Five Towns in the columns of the _Staffordshire
Recorder_--a correspondence which had driven Aunt Constance to conceal
the paper after the second week. I guessed that they might smile at the
simplicity of my heart could they see it. Meaning of existence! Why, they
were reared in it! The naturalness of natural people and of natural acts
struck me like a blow, and I withdrew, whipped, into myself. My adventure
grew smaller. But I recalled its ecstasies. I dwelt on the romantic
perfection of Diaz. It seemed to me amazing, incredible, that Diaz, the
glorious and incomparable Diaz, had loved me--_me_! out of all the
ardent, worshipping women that the world contained. I wondered if he had
wakened up, and I felt sorry for him. So far, I had not decided how soon,
if at all, I should communicate with him. My mind was incapable of
reaching past the next few hours--the next hour.

We stopped at a station surrounded by the evidences of that tireless,
unceasing, and tremendous manufacturing industry which distinguishes the
Five Towns, and I was left alone in the compartment. The train rumbled on
through a landscape of fiery furnaces, and burning slag-heaps, and foul