At the top of Portland Place the coachman took his way northwestward, first skirting the outer ring of Regent's Park and then making the gradually ascending slope of the Finchley Road. The detached houses on either side, standing back in their walled gardens, were mostly blind. Only here and there, behind drawn curtains, a window glowed, telling of intimate drama gallant or mournful within. The wide grey pavements were deserted; the place arrestingly quiet, save for the occasional heavy tread of a passing policeman on beat, and the rhythmical trot of the horse. And the Lady of the Windswept Dust was quiet likewise, looking straight before her, sitting stiffly upright, her hands clasped in her lap, the shifting lights and shadows playing queerly over her face and her bare neck, causing her to appear unsubstantial and indefinite as a figure in a dream. Yet a strange energy possessed her and emanated from her, so that the atmosphere about her was electric, oppressive to Iglesias as with a brooding of storm. Her very quietness was agitating, weighed with meaning which challenged his imagination and even his powers of reticence and self-control. Opposite Swiss Cottage Station, where the main road forks, a string of market waggons--slouching, drowsy car-men, backed by a pale green wall of glistening cabbages, nodding above their slow-moving teams--passed, with a jingle of brass-mounted harness and grind of wheels. This roused Poppy, and the storm broke. "Dominic," she said breathlessly, "do you at all know that you've just told me means to me?" "I have never known positively until now; but it was impossible that I should not have entertained suspicions." "Did he--you know who I mean--ever speak of me?" "I think," Iglesias said, "he came very near doing so, more than once. But I put a stop to the conversation." "You frightened him," Poppy rejoined. "I know one could do that. It was a last resource, a hateful one. Is there anything so difficult to forgive as being driven to be cruel? One was bound to be cruel in self-defence, or one would have been stifled, utterly degraded by self-contempt, bled to death not only in respect of money but of self-esteem." She threw up her hands with a gesture at once fierce and despairing. "Oh! the weak, the weak," she cried, "of how many crimes they are the authors! Crimes more particularly abominable when the weak one is the man, and woman--poor brute--is strong." She settled herself sideways in the corner of the carriage, turning her face once more full upon her companion.