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approached the curve, a little gate, forgotten till then, that, below her, opened from the copse to a right of way across the line. All was fitted to her need. She would stand here, just above it, as if she had just ascended from the gate and was waiting for the train to pass before she crossed.

‘I can stand here to watch it pass,’ she thought, ‘and then go home, and no one will ever know. And it will become to me only a desperate dream. People have so often stood and watched trains go by and had these thoughts. They mean nothing, really.’ And she remembered that it was always pleasant to see the tray of early-morning-tea brought into one’s room. She could go home because of early-morning-tea. And now in the distance she heard the low humming of the approaching train, growing in the air, and remembered Anna Karénine and how she had read the book to Clive one summer before the war. She had cried in reading of Anna’s death and Clive had put his head down on her shoulder and held her.

The face of the train appeared suddenly above the copses. It was like the face of a bee, so blank and so intent, and the sinuous following body lurched, fore-shortened, smoothly round the curve. If she stood quietly to watch it pass, no one could