She dared not picture the ship sailing for England nearly every day of
the week. If she were free to do what she liked--or almost what she
liked--she would go at least as often as every Saturday to watch a big
liner move out from the dock, just for the delicious torture of it.
And yet--did she want to go back home? Whenever she asked herself this
question--and it was often--invariably for some silly reason, she saw
the blue, wistful eyes of that hypocrite, the younger Peter Rolls.
Also there came upon her a choking sense of homelessness, a
mother-want in a lonely world. But, as Sadie Kirk agreed with her in
saying, "What _was_ the good of squeezing juice out of your eyes just
because you happened to be low in your mind?" No, she would not cry!
Then, after all, she dropped asleep in a minute's interval between
trains, and dreamed that she was lost in Fifty-Ninth Street. It was as
long as the way to England, and a ghastly street to be lost in. Its
sky line--if it knew anything about the sky--was as irregular as a
Wagner dragon's teeth--high buildings and low buildings, and shanties
where coloured families lived; little, sinister-looking houses where
people could be murdered and their bodies never found, shops where you
could buy everything you didn't want and nothing that you did.
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