was for an instant aware of almost uncontrollable terror. She could feel
her heart beating, yet she could not withdraw her gaze. It was nothing:
no danger threatened Jenny but the danger of uneventful life; and her
sense of sudden yielding to unknown force was the merest fancy, to be
quickly forgotten when the occasion had passed. None the less, for that
instant her dread was breathless. It was the fear of one who walks in a
wood, at an inexplicable rustle. The darkness and the sense of moving
water continued to fascinate her, and she slightly shuddered, not at a
thought, but at the sensation of the moment. At last she closed her
eyes, still, however, to see mirrored as in some visual memory the
picture she was trying to ignore. In a faint panic, hardly conscious to
her fear, she stared at her neighbour's newspaper, spelling out the
headings to some of the paragraphs, until the need of such protection
was past.

As the car proceeded over the bridge, grinding its way through the still
rolling echoes of the striking hour, it seemed part of an endless
succession of such cars, all alike crowded with homeward-bound
passengers, and all, to the curious mind, resembling ships that pass
very slowly at night from safe harbourage to the unfathomable elements
of the open sea. It was such a cold still night that the sliding windows
of the car were almost closed, and the atmosphere of the covered upper
deck was heavy with tobacco smoke. It was so dark that one could not see
beyond the fringes of the lamplight upon the bridge. The moon was in its
last quarter, and would not rise for several hours; and while the
glitter of the city lay behind, and the sky was greyed with light from
below, the surrounding blackness spread creeping fingers of night in
every shadow.

The man sitting beside Jenny continued to puff steadfastly at his pipe,