It would be unfair to Amy, however, not to correct this by saying downright that she was, as far as these things can be coexistent, a flower of England’s womanhood, beautiful, intelligent, high-principled, a charming companion, a devoted daughter, and the best imaginable comrade.

“He will be a lucky man, on whom Amy bestows her love.” So said the dozen or so, each of whom regarded her as their closest friend. But it must be admitted that the male section of these, though they valued her friendship more than anything else in the world, found it possible to maintain it at the pitch of high intimacy she set only by making the most of certain other acquaintances they had among the ladies of Bohemia and the Café Royal.

And now Amy stretched out her hand, and said with a frank and tender smile:

“Come now, old boy! Don’t be furious with me for a little plain speaking. After all, we’ve both said more than we meant, no doubt, but it’s a sad case if being honest with one another should estrange us.” And she gave him a melting smile, the glutinous sweetness of which he devoured with the avidity of a diabetic who swallows a fatal spoonful of jam. And, not pausing to analyze her words — nay, only too eager, in his trembling desire for reconciliation, to make every surrender he could — he sprang toward her and caught her yielding but elastic frame in his arms. As he was kissing the silky curls at the back of her neck, a process which in itself made the corresponding hairs on Emily even more stiff and straight than usual, Amy peeped out underneath and gave her a glance, and this glance said as plainly as any words might:

“You see?”

Chapter 8

And at night along the dusky highway near

and nearer drawn,

Sees in heaven the light of London flaring

like a dreary dawn.

To the outer, if not to the inner, eye, this was rather reversed when Emily first approached the metropolis, for they all went up together on the morning of the first of May, a day so bright in the country, and so conspicuously clouded by London’s smoke pall, that it seemed as if they were traveling in time rather than in space, and approaching the outskirts, not of the town, but of yesterday’s bad weather. It follows that the highway along which they were being drawn became dusky only as the gray streets engulfed them, for, on the washed hills outside, unpunctual spring had arrived with a rush, all hot and shining, and the railway lines glinted above the hot shingle of the track, as, with a blue glance, she made them her mirror, while she powdered her face with chalk dust and dandelion pollen.

The downs through which the line ran were torn everywhere by new roads, long angry scratches, along which buildings in every stage of erection stood like clots of the earth’s red-brick blood. Clustered under the railway embankment, a few white, roughcast villas were being built, the completed ones being already occupied, and, when the fair-haired, bun-faced, bare-armed young matrons came put to pin napkins on their clotheslines, they seemed from one angle like Piero della Francesca angels, against their background of roughcut chalk roadway and roofless walls, and, from another, like advertisements for a labor-saving soap.

Inside the carriage, the heat was bewildering rather than intense. The dust, which had lain congealed all the damp winter, awoke in the cushions behind their heads, issuing out at the least movement to tickle the inflamed membrane at the back of Emily’s throat and nose. She had a slight cold, which at once heightened and confused her impressions: she seemed lost among many speeds, many times, many states of existence. Her companions’ faces, which had a waxy and artificial look, lolling weakly as dolls’ heads, seemed to survive only by a miracle the sudden leap and snap of signal boxes, which flattened themselves on the windows with loud smacks; unsmilingly they still wagged after the temporary annihilation of tunnels, and bobbed like corks on the terrific entrance of concertina-ing hilly streets, volleying into the carriage with the whirr of a watchman’s rattle.

But through it all Emily was conscious of a feeling of renewed life and anticipation. London certainly proffered a dawn, though it might be a dreary one. After the icy midnight of ‘The Woodlands’, the prospect of seeing the world’s largest capital, rich in public buildings, monuments, stately thoroughfares, and, above all, in associations of the many distinguished figures whose lives and opinions she had read, was one which she could not but find exhilarating.

“Besides,” thought she, “my dear master will now have an opportunity of meeting other women, both good and bad, and in the first he will see what his beloved should be, and in the second he will see, with eyes unclouded by love, what she is. He will recognize faults which are the true cause of his present discomfort, and which, in his present blindness, he imagines to be resident more in himself than in her.”

“Suitcase,” said Amy peremptorily, and the chimp reached up a slim but strong right arm to take it from the rack. Mr. Fatigay began to gather up handbags and papers.

Victoria Station! Emily completely forgot her cold and her problems as she pattered along after the engaged couple, nor did she allow the heavy suitcase with which she was burdened to prevent her from peeping eagerly in all directions. Most of all, of course, when she was once embarked on her first taxi-drive through London, she was impressed by the appearance of our marvelous police. She thought them simply remarkable. For the rest, though the reflections of the untutored chimp are scarcely worth the setting down, she was mostly struck by the appearance of abject misery which was apparent in all the passersby, especially in their sickly complexions, their peevish or anxious looks, their slave’s gait, and, most of all, in their rare and rickety smiles.

Do not think, however, that she jumped at once to the conclusion, as some more superficially observant stranger might have done, that the great city is on the whole a nasty mistake, and that it would be better, all things considered, if Highgate Hill were to turn Vesuvius, so to speak, and obliterate, to put it bluntly, all the ugly antheap at its feet. No: she had had experience of her own enough to know that happiness is like some of the lower forms of life, of which, if one of them is cut into pieces, some inconsiderable fragment or other is sure to survive. Thus she had little doubt that, among these hurrying millions, most of whom looked to her (though she knew little of homes and offices) as if they had been both crossed in love and condemned to penal servitude for life, many had compensations, which, however small they might seem to the indifferent spectator, must in logic be so great to each individual concerned that they compensated for the toil, the illness, the worry, and the emotional starvation marked clearly in his face, for they demonstrably withheld him from cutting his throat. “What a wonderful thing a stamp collection must be,” thought Emily, “or the construction with one’s own hands of a home radio set!”

By now their taxi had reached Haverstock Hill, where Amy had a little upper maisonette in which she spent the greater part of every year. The rooms, unlike the larger, but more stereotyped, apartments of her mother’s house, were furnished to express her own personality. The furniture was modern and artistic, but not lacking in occasional evidences of a charming feminine touch. Under a large colored reproduction of Van Gogh’s sunflowers, an expensive doll, dressed to represent Polly Peachum, flopped topsily against the telephone. There were bulb-flowers, faded during the owner’s absence; a drawing by Augustus John and a huge witch ball.

While her escort set down their burdens, Amy went forward, and flung the windows open, letting in the warm and living air from outside, where a man was selling brown wallflowers.

“Have you everything you want, my dear,” said Mr. Fatigay, “before I rush off to the bank?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Amy. “Except for a little peace and seclusion. I always want a spell of solitude after staying at home. And now, with you as well as mother and everyone else — well, I’m sure you’ll understand, dear, if I want a quiet evening with one or two old friends.”

“Why, of course,” replied her lover, his face falling a little, for he had hoped that she would go that evening to the theater with him. “Will you come out somewhere with me tomorrow?”

“Well, let’s see,” said Amy.