III

The visit ended in the stillness that fell upon the empty carriage as the train left the last red-roofed houses behind and slid out into the open country. She swung for an instant over the spread of the town, serene unchanging sunlit grey, and brilliant white, green shuttered and balconied, towards the sea, warm yellow brick, red-roofed, towards the inland green, her visit still ahead of her. But the interiors of Eve’s dark little house and Harriett’s bright one slipped in between her and the pictured town, and the four days’ succession of incidents overtook her in disorder, playing themselves out, backwards and forwards, singly, in clear succession, two or three together, related to each other by some continuity of mood within herself, pell mell, swiftly interchanging, each scene in turn claiming the foremost place; moments stood out dark and overshadowing; the light that flooded the whole strove in vain to reach these painful peaks. The faraway spring offered a healing repetition of her visit; but the moments remained immovable. Eve would still be obstinately saying the Baws and really thinking she knew which side she was on.⁠ ⁠… Wawkup and Poole Carey⁠ ⁠… those were quotations as certainly as were Eve’s newspaper ideas; Wimpole Street quotations. The thing was that Eve had learned to want to be always in the right and was not swift enough in gathering things⁠ ⁠… not worldly enough. The train was rocking and swaying in its rush towards its first stop. After that the journey would seem only a few