At lunch-time I went out, avoiding the chattering throng of girls. It was one of those sultry early-Spring days that seem hotter than July. All the luncheon-places were as full up as the Tube had been. I could not wait for a seat in that atmosphere of not-too-cheap but nasty food.
Eggs that were "fresh in places," badly poached, on toast limp with water, and never a suspicion of butter—fish that had said good-bye to the sea many days ago; or burnt pieces of bacon swimming in thin fat—all these presented unpalatable realities which I felt absolutely unable to face that day of days.
Sickened, I turned back into the glare of Trafalgar Square. I sat down listlessly in the only patch of shade that I could find, on the steps of the National Gallery. I looked across the bone-dry fountains where wounded soldiers were swinging their bluer-trousered legs. I gazed gloomily past the Nelson Column, down Whitehall, with its 'buses and people.
Ants on a human ant-heap, struggling for life—but was it worth living? Deep in my heart the thought persisted, "I must get out of this. I can't stand it. How can I get away?"
Half-consciously my hand went to my bag to feel for the letter that had blackened existence. I hadn't looked at it again since Elizabeth had indignantly pushed it back to me. My fingers met the two other letters, not yet opened.
"May as well see what they are," I thought, drearily.
One was a rather terrifying bill for shoes. Well, it would be the last of its kind—it's love that comes so ruinously expensive in nice shoes and stockings!
The other was in a clear, strong hand-writing that I didn't know, and it had been forwarded on from my home.
I opened it.
Picture me, a speck of navy-blue and white on the grey steps. London glaring and blaring beyond me, and in my hand the scrap of paper—the second letter that was to fall upon me like a thunderbolt. First, Muriel's about Harry. Now this. I'd been actually carrying it about with me all the morning unopened, cheek-by-jowl with that other letter!