Maria went to the railroad station. She was just in time for a train. She got on the rear car and sat in the last seat. She looked about and did not see anybody whom she knew. She recalled how she had run away before, and how Wollaston had brought her back. She knew that it would not happen so again. She was on a through train which did not stop at the station where he had found her. When the train slowed up a little in passing that station, she saw the bench on the platform where she had sat, and a curious sensation came over her. She was like one who has made the leap and realizes that there is nothing more to dread, and who gets even a certain abnormal pleasure from the sensation. When the conductor came through the car she purchased her ticket for New York, and asked when the train was due in the city. When she learned that it was due at an hour so late that it would be impossible for her to go, as she had planned, to Edgham that night, she did not, even then, for the time being, feel in the least dismayed. She had plenty of money. Her last quarter's salary was in her little satchel. The train was made up of Pullmans only, and it was by a good chance that she had secured a seat. She gazed out of the large window at the flying landscape, and again that sense of pleasure in the midst of pain was over her. The motion itself was exhilarating. She seemed to be speeding past herself and her own anxieties, which suddenly appeared as petty and evanescent as the flying telegraph-poles along the track. "It has to be over some time," she reflected. "Nothing matters." She felt comforted by a realization of immensity and the continuance of motion. She comprehended her own atomic nature in the great scheme of things. She had never done so before. Her own interests had always loomed up before her like a beam in the eye of God. Now she saw that they were infinitesimal, and the knowledge soothed her. She leaned her head back and dozed a little. She was awakened by the porter thrusting a menu into her hands. She ordered something. It was not served promptly, and she had no appetite. There was some tea which tasted of soap. Chapter XXXVII There were very few people in this car, for the reason that there had recently been a terrible rear-end collision on the road, and people had flocked into the forward cars. There were three young girls who filled the car with chatter, and irritated Maria unreasonably. They were very pretty and well dressed, and with no reserve. They were as inconsequently confidential about their own affairs as so many sparrows, but more intelligible. One by one the men left and went into the smoker, before this onslaught of harsh trebles shrieking above the roar of the train, obtruding their little, bird-like affairs, their miniature hoppings upon the stage of life, upon all in the car.