herself with stroking her good aunt's hand, and with
meditating, half sensibly and half poetically, on the
journey that was about to begin from King's Cross.

Like many others who have lived long in a great capital,
she had strong feelings about the various railway termini.
They are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through
them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them alas!
we return. In Paddington all Cornwall is latent and the
remoter west; down the inclines of Liverpool Street lie
fenlands and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through the
pylons of Euston; Wessex behind the poised chaos of
Waterloo. Italians realize this, as is natural; those of
them who are so unfortunate as to serve as waiters in Berlin
call the Anhalt Bahnhof the Stazione d'Italia, because by it
they must return to their homes. And he is a chilly
Londoner who does not endow his stations with some
personality, and extend to them, however shyly, the emotions
of fear and love.

To Margaret--I hope that it will not set the reader
against her--the station of King's Cross had always
suggested Infinity. Its very situation--withdrawn a little
behind the facile splendours of St. Pancras--implied a
comment on the materialism of life. Those two great arches,
colourless, indifferent, shouldering between them an
unlovely clock, were fit portals for some eternal adventure,
whose issue might be prosperous, but would certainly not be
expressed in the ordinary language of prosperity. If you
think this ridiculous, remember that it is not Margaret who