"If it were in a book, he would save me at the last minute and fall in love with me and it would all end happily. Or he would see me now, and perhaps speak to me, and he would understand all I told him, and persuade me not to. Anyhow, it would all come right."
She smiled in the darkness.
"But that won't happen to me. There never was any one—and nobody would love me now, especially when they knew all about me." She remembered the haggard, distorted countenance that the looking-glass had shown her—the great, starting eyes with discoloured circles beneath them, and the blackened, prominent teeth, more salient than ever from the thinness of her face.
She could almost have laughed, without any conscious bitterness, at the idea of any romance in connection with her present self.
And yet the girl, Alex Clare, could have loved—had looked forward to love and to happiness as her rights, just as Pamela Clare did now.
But Pamela was different. Every one was—No!
It was Alex that was different—that had always been different.
She began to feel less warm, and shivered a little as she waited.
It occurred to her, not with any sense of fear, but with vexation, that her purpose would be far more difficult of achievement if she waited until she was physically chilled.
She looked up at the bridge again, and the figure was still there, at the furthest end. Alex measured the length of the bridge with her eyes.