Here, in the November twilight on Leyton Marsh, Eddy found her once. He himself was bicycling back from Walthamstow, where he had been to see one of his Club friends (he had made many) who lived there. Eileen was leaning on a stile at the end of one of the footpaths that thread this strange borderland. They met face to face; and she looked at him as if she did not see him, as if she was expecting someone not him. He got off his bicycle, and said “Eileen.”
She looked at him dully, and said, “I’m waiting for Hugh.”
He gently took her hand. “You’re cold. Come home with me.”
Her dazed eyes upon his face slowly took perception and meaning, and with them pain rushed in. She shuddered horribly, and caught away her hand.
“Oh ... I was waiting ... but it’s no use ... I suppose I’m going mad....”
“No. You’re only tired and unstrung. Come home now, won’t you. Indeed you mustn’t stay.”
The mists were white and chilly about them; it was a strange phantom world, set between the million-eyed monster to the west, and the smaller, sprawling, infinitely sad monster to the east.
She flung out her arms to the red-eyed city, and moaned, “Hugh, Hugh, Hugh,” till she choked and cried.
Eddy bit his own lips to steady them. “Eileen—dear Eileen—come home. He’d want you to.”
She returned, through sobs that rent her. “He wants nothing any more. He always wanted things, and never got them; and now he’s dead, the way he can’t even want. But I want him; I want him; I want him—oh, Hugh!”