"Do you know what I think?" she said.

"Not quite all of it," said the doctor, watching her face, and thinking
how incongruous it looked in Regent Street.

"Well, I think biology's one of the beasts we've to kill before God
walks along us. So there! Tropical forests--maggots--women," she added,
and the doctor laughed outright.

The chief impression she got of London was its aimlessness. It reminded
her irresistibly of an ant-hill she had seen disturbed once. Myriads of
tiny creatures had scurried passionately, exhaustingly, after each other
to and fro, no whence and no whither; the people thronging out of shops
and offices at dusk frightened her: there seemed so many of them, and,
looking at their tired, strained faces and their unkingly way of
hurrying along, uninterested and uninteresting save in getting to their
destination, it seemed to her that they were not thinking of ever
"towering": when Dr. Angus reminded her that they were so busy keeping
alive that they had no time to think how and why they were alive at all,
she was plunged into black depression; at home she had only had less
than a hundred people and a few beasts about the farm to pity. Now it
came to her with sudden force that all these people, so driven by
different forces, were to be pitied. But as soon as she saw the crowd of
people at Fenchurch Street station and a chalked notice, "Boat train for
the R.M.S. _Oriana_," she forgot abstract worries.

There seemed to be a good many children, small groups of five or six
with father and mother, and piles of inexpensive-looking luggage; there
were several young men who looked very much like the lads who worked
about the farm at home; there were groups of girls and a more or less