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Miriam for her clothes, and then on to France or Italy or Africa, anywhere where she might hide. But as she approached the station she knew that London was not her intention, nor foreign travel. She turned aside into the woods that ran beside the line and walked out into the country beyond and along deep lanes and up over a common thick with gorse bushes where she stripped a cluster of flowers into her palm in passing by. She had always picked gorse on this common, ever since she had come to Oddley, held it until it was warm and sniffed at the thick soft fragrance. To-day she picked and held, but forgot to smell it. She lifted her wrist presently and saw that it was 3.35. It was time to turn. So she crossed the fields and climbed a gate and came again to the railway woods, went through them, creeping under the wire and up the steep embankment, and stood for a moment looking up and down the line. But, she remembered, walking on, if she stood here she herself would be seen from a distance by the engine-driver. A little further on the line curved above the woods and she would be invisible until the train was almost upon her. There was plenty of time; and raising her wrist again to look at her watch, she walked quickly along the cinder path beside the sleepers and saw, as she