She was glad indeed when the train steamed into the station. She got
into an empty carriage, for the rush that goes on each evening
Londonward from the suburbs had not yet begun. And then, to her surprise, she found that it was the thought of her
husband, not of the man to whom she was going to give herself, that
filled her sad, embittered heart. Old memories--memories connected with Frank, his love for her, her love
for him--became insistent. She lived again, while tears forced
themselves into her closed eyes, through the culminating moment of her
marriage day, the start for the honeymoon,--a start made amid a crowd of
laughing, cheering friends, from the little station she had just left. She remembered the delicious tremor which had come over her when she
had found herself at last alone, really alone, with her three-hour-old
bridegroom. How infinitely kind and tender Frank had been to her! And then Agnes reminded herself, with tightening breath, that men like
Frank Barlow are always kind--too kind--to women. Other journeys she and Frank had taken together came and mocked her, and
especially the journey which had followed a month after little Francis's
birth. Frank had driven with her, the nurse, and the baby, to the station--but
only to see them off. He had had a very important case in the Courts
just then, and it was out of the question that he should go with his
wife to Littlehampton for the change of air, the few weeks by the sea,
that had been ordered by her good, careful doctor. And then at the last moment Frank had suddenly jumped into the railway
carriage without a ticket, and had gone along with her part of the way! She remembered the surprise of the monthly nurse, the woman's prim
remark, when he had at last got out at Horsham, that Mr. Barlow was
certainly the kindest husband she, the nurse, had ever seen. But these memories, now so desecrated, did not make her give up her
purpose. Far from it, for in a queer way they made her think more
tenderly of Gerald Ferrier, whose life had been so lonely, and who had
known nothing of the simpler human sanctities and joys, and who had
never--so he had told her with a kind of bitter scorn of himself--been
loved by any woman whom he himself could love. In her ears there sounded Ferrier's quick, hoarsely uttered words:
"D'you think I should ever have said a word to you of all this--if you
had gone on being happy? D'you think I'd ask you to come to me if I
thought you had any chance of being happy with him--now?" And she knew in her soul that he had spoken truly. Ferrier would never
have tried to disturb her happiness with Frank; he had never so tried
during those two years when they had seen so much of each other, and
when Agnes had known, deep down in her heart, that he loved her, though
it had suited her conscience to pretend that his love was only
"friendship." III

The train glided into the fog-laden London station, and very slowly
Agnes Barlow stepped down out of the railway carriage. She felt
oppressed by the fact that she was alone. During the last few weeks
Ferrier had always been standing on the platform waiting to greet her,
eager to hurry her into a cab--to a picture gallery, to a concert, or of
late, oftenest of all, to one of those green oases which the great town
still leaves her lovers. But now Ferrier was not here. Ferrier was ill, solitary, in the lonely
rooms which he called "home." Agnes Barlow hurried out of the station. Hammer, hammer, hammer went what she supposed was her heart. It was a
curious, to Agnes a new sensation, bred of the fear that she would meet
some acquaintance to whom she would have to explain her presence in
town. She could not help being glad that the fog was of that dense,
stifling quality which makes every one intent on his own business rather
than on that of his neighbours. Then something happened which scared Agnes. She was walking, now very
slowly, out of the station, when a tall man came up to her. He took off
his hat and peered insolently into her face. "I think I've had the pleasure of meeting you before," he said. She stared at him with a great, unreasonable fear gripping her heart. No
doubt this was some business acquaintance of Frank's. "I--I don't think
so," she faltered. "Oh, yes," he said. "Don't you remember, two years ago at the Pirola in
Regent Street? I don't _think_ I can be wrong." And then Agnes understood. "You are making a mistake," she said
breathlessly, and quickened her steps. The man looked after her with a jeering smile, but he made no further
attempt to molest her. She was trembling--shaken with fear, disgust, and terror. It was odd,
but such a thing had never happened to pretty Agnes Barlow before. She
was not often alone in London; she had never been there alone on such a
foggy evening, an evening which invited such approaches as those she had
just repulsed. She touched a respectable-looking woman on the arm. "Can you tell me the
way to Flood Street, Chelsea?" she asked, her voice faltering. "Why, yes, Miss. It's a good step from here, but you can't mistake it. You've only got to go straight along, and then ask again after you've
been walking about twenty minutes. You can't mistake it." And she
hurried on, while Agnes tried to keep in step behind her, for the slight
adventure outside the station became retrospectively terrifying. She
thrilled with angry fear lest that--that brute should still be stalking
her; but when she looked over her shoulder she saw that the pavement was
nearly bare of walkers. At last the broad thoroughfare narrowed to a point where four streets
converged. Agnes glanced fearfully this way and that. Which of those
shadowy black-coated figures hurrying past, intent on their business,
would direct her rightly? Within the last half-hour Agnes had grown
horribly afraid of men. And then, with more relief than the fact warranted, across the narrow
roadway she saw emerge, between two parting waves of fog, the shrouded
figure of a woman leaning against a dead wall. Agnes crossed the street, but as she stepped up on to the kerb, suddenly
there broke from her, twice repeated, a low, involuntary cry of dread. "Teresa!" she cried. And then, again, "Teresa!" For in the shrouded
figure before her she had recognized, with a thrill of incredulous
terror, the form and lineaments of Teresa Maldo. But there came no answering cry; and Agnes gave a long, gasping,
involuntary sigh of relief as she realized that what had seemed to be
her dead friend's dark, glowing face was the face of a little child--a
black-haired beggar child, with large startled eyes wide open on a
living world. The tall woman whose statuesque figure had so strangely recalled
Teresa's supple, powerful form was holding up the child, propping it on
the wall behind her. Still shaking with the chill terror induced by the vision she now
believed she had not seen, Agnes went up closer to the melancholy group. Even now she longed to hear the woman speak.