She stood still and listened. She heard nothing. Traffic seemed stopped
in this region. On her left there were three steps. She went up them and
was under the porch of a house. Light shone dully from within, and by it
she could just make out on the door the number "8." At least it seemed
to her that probably it was an "8." She hesitated, came down the steps,
and walked on. It was impossible to see the names of the streets and
squares. But presently she would come across a policeman. She went on
and on, but no policeman bulked shadowy against the background of night
and of the fog which at last seemed almost terrible to her.

Rosamund was not timid. She was constitutionally incapable of timidity.
Nor was she actively alarmed in a strong and definite way. But gradually
there seemed to permeate her a cold, almost numbing sensation of
loneliness and of desolation. For the first time in her life she felt
not merely alone but solitary, and not merely solitary but as if she
were condemned to be so by some power that was hostile to her.

It was a hideous feeling. Something in the fog and in the night made
an assault upon her imagination. Abruptly she was numbered among the
derelict women whom nobody wants, whom no man thinks of or wishes to be
with, whom no child calls mother. She felt physically and morally, "I
am solitary," and it was horrible to her. She saw herself old and alone,
and she shuddered.

How long she walked on she did not know, but when at last she heard
a step shuffling along somewhere in front of her, she had almost--she
thought--realized Eternity.

The step was not coming towards her but was going onwards slowly before
her. She hastened, and presently came up with an old man, poorly dressed