"No—please!" Barbara entreated. "We have filled up to-morrow and the next day, and aunt has asked some people to afternoon tea on Saturday."
"All right; it may be better when we get to Westbourne Park. I'll go a bit of the way with you."
He looked for a cab. Barbara waited passively by his side, gazing straight before her. She had never looked prettier than she did at that moment, standing on the muddy step in the midst of the universal dinginess. Excitement had given tension and brilliancy to her face, she was flushed and warm in her wrappings of dark fur, and above the rose-red of her cheeks her eyes were shining like stars. "Here we are!" said Scarlett, as he hailed a loitering hansom.
They drove northward, passing rows of shops, all blurred and glistening in the foggy air, and wide, muddy crossings, where people started back at the driver's hoarse shout. Scarlett, with Barbara's hand in his, watched the long procession of figures on the pavement—dusky figures which looked like marionnettes, going mechanically and ceaselessly on their way. To the young man, driving by at his ease, their measured movements had an air of ineffectual toil; they were on the treadmill, they hurried for ever, and were always left behind. Looking at them he thought of the myriads in the rear, stepping onward, stepping continually. If they had really been marionnettes! But the droll thing was that each figure had a history; there was a world-picture in every one of those little, jogging heads.
Presently the shops became scarce, the procession on the pavement grew scattered and thin. They were driving up long, dim streets of stuccoed houses. They passed a square or two where trees, black and bare, rose above shadowy masses of evergreens all pent together within iron railings. One might have fancied that the poor things had strayed into the smoky wilderness, and been impounded in that melancholy place.
"We must be almost there," said Adrian at last, when they had turned into a cross street where the plastered fronts were lower and shabbier. He put the question to the cabman.
"Next turning but one, sir," was the answer.
"Then I'll get out here," said Scarlett.
Barbara murmured a word of farewell, but she felt that it was best. She always thought of Reynold Harding as the unhappiest man she knew, and she could not have driven up to his door to flaunt her great happiness before his eyes. She leant forward quickly, and caught a glimpse of that clear happiness of hers on the side walk, smiling and waving a farewell, the one bright and pleasant thing to look upon in the grey foulness of the afternoon.