Ada squirmed helplessly. She could have screamed. Anne sat at the outside of the seat and pinned her to it. The tram seemed a Juggernaut car which drove implacably over her dreams: a prison where she was tortured by a coarse old woman with work-roughened hands and an endless flow of vitriol. She wanted to tell Anne that she lied, that the more she deprecated Sam the more desirable Ada knew him to be, that her grapes were neither sour nor to be soured by Anne’s insane jealousy; and she could not do it. The ride seemed more of a nightmare with every moment that passed. The tram was a mad wheeled cage with a mad driver and a mad guard. It left the lines and careered wildly into desolation, and she was fettered in it to an avenging fury who would not stop talking, but with ruthless common sense pricked all the bubbles of her hopes. She shut her eyes and abandoned herself to misery. Each minute seemed an hour. She thought that somebody was throttling her, that the flying cage was her tomb, that vampires sucked her blood, and her naked, drained body was shackled to her seat until the car, driving inevitably through black space, bumped finally against a star in one consuming smash. She opened her eyes to find that the tram had stopped at its suburban terminus and that Anne was asking: “Shall we get down for a walk or shall we go back by the same car?” So she was still in the living world, and with the consciousness of it courage returned to her. For a minute she was silent, fighting her demons off, catching at facts and weighing them. Anne was not a vampire, but an old worn woman who had, curiously, the right to call Sam Branstone son--Ada’s future mother-in-law, and a quaint one too; one to be put firmly and haughtily in her place and kept there. “We’ll stay on this car,” she replied. Its madness had departed. It was a tram, quite eminently sane and usual. “I think,” she went on, “that you exaggerate the difficulties. I’ve no doubt that Sam will have more money by the time we’re married. You see, he has me to work for now.” Not a simper with it either. Pure matter-of-fact statement, and the truth of it hit Anne, the cool assumption that Ada as a spur to effort was more competent than Anne. And this to Anne who had learnt algebra for Sam, to Anne who had underfed herself that he might wear the clothes a Grammar School boy ought to wear, to Anne who--oh, it was ineffable, but it defeated her because she knew, bitterly, gallingly, but undeniably, that it was true. This baby-faced chit, this fool in petticoats was more to Sam than the mother who bore him. Queen Anne was dead and Ada Struggles reigned in place of her. CHAPTER X--GERALD ADAMS, SOCIOLOGIST