Half-past four. She would not watch the window for Jennifer any more. For the first time it occurred to her that Jennifer might not come. She beckoned to the waitress and ordered China tea and scone.
‘I won’t wait any longer for my friend. Something must have delayed her.’
She sat on, crumbling the scone, sipping tea. She counted twenty-three times over very slowly; and then looked at the door. Then she counted again. She took an illustrated paper from the window-sill and studied it. If she went straight through its pages without looking up, Jennifer would come.
Quarter to five. Jennifer might have made a mistake about the tea-shop: perhaps she was sitting waiting somewhere else. But that was impossible. Perhaps she had confused the time, the date....
She took Jennifer’s letter from her bag. October 24th. Four o’clock. “Don’t wait for me after five.”
What was it that she had scratched out? She scrutinized the thick erasure; but there was no clue.
The clocks struck five. When the last one had finished chiming she rose, paid her bill and went out again into the happy-looking streets, where there was nothing more now to fear or to desire.
The train steamed out of the station.
Farewell to Cambridge, to whom she was less than nothing. She had been deluded into imagining that it bore her some affection. Under its politeness, it had disliked and distrusted her and all other females; and now it ignored her. It took its mists about it, folding within them Roddy and Tony and all the other young men; and let her go.
Darkness fell, and the ploughed fields went wheeling and slipping by, the smoke-white evening vapours laid low and heavy over their dim chill violet expanses.