The agent, behind the partition, drew in the money and pushed out the ticket, without seeing or caring to see whether the passenger standing aside in the shadow were man, woman or child, but taking a man for granted.
Lilith got on the train while the railway porters were throwing off and throwing on mail bags, and by the time she had dropped into her seat, midway in a nearly empty car, the train started again.
The car was but dimly lighted, and there were but five other passengers in it besides Lilith. They were all strangers to her—probably country merchants on their way to the Eastern cities to buy their Spring goods—mostly clothed in heavy gray overcoats, with their hats pulled low over their foreheads, and their hands thrust into their pockets. They seemed more inclined to doze than to talk, and seldom spoke, except to remark how very cold the weather was, opine that the mercury was at zero, and declared that such a thing had never occurred in that neighborhood so late in March within the memory of man.
And then they hugged their overcoats more closely around them, pulled their hats down lower, and relapsed into silence and dozing.
Lilith, now that the hurry and excitement of her sudden departure was over, and she was seated in the car, with nothing to do, suffered a natural reaction into depression and great discouragement.
What was before her? Whither should she go? What could she do? What was to be her future life? Who were to be her future friends or companions? She was leaving her old familiar home, leaving all the friends of her youth, going among perfect strangers, without one single letter of introduction to any one. What would be the end?
Had she done right to take the responsibility of her future into her own young, inexperienced hands? Would it not have been better to have borne the reproach and humiliation she suffered at Cloud Cliffs, and to have remained there and patiently waited for events? She would at least have been safe.
But in answer to these thoughts came the memory of her husband’s cruel words hissed into her ears:
“In a few hours I shall leave here—leave my father’s house—never to return to it while you desecrate it with your presence.”
And she felt that it was better to go out into the bitter world of strangers than to lose the last remnant of her self-respect by remaining in the home which her husband had scornfully declared that her presence desecrated.