It was a moment before she could make herself follow him. If Winnie died----How did these things happen? Laurence was almost like a murderer. For a moment she envied him, then in her terrible emptiness she felt herself more beautiful than he. Mad. I'm going mad. He doesn't know. Laurence wanted to get away from her. His expression of life was always bitter and cheap and he knew it, but he was rather proud of the exquisiteness which made it unendurable for him to tell the truth to himself. He despised Alice for the brutal veracity of her introspection. Alice carried pain of self like a banner. He felt that her arrogant suffering showed a want of fineness. To dare to see as she did, he felt, one must be emotionally dull. Winnie was false and puerile, but because he felt that the truth would kill Winnie, she seemed to him more delicate and beautiful than Alice. Alice recognized that Laurence hated her because she understood him too well. She could not comprehend this. She would have let herself be known even in utter contempt. She was clouded now with the murk of herself that no one would know. She wanted to be known to be cleansed. * * * * * Winnie was tired of the country that left her too much with herself. She hated the empty road in the bleak days and the black tree at the end that swayed against the damp green twilights. She was glad when Mrs. Price agreed that it was time for them to go back to the city. They left the farmhouse at night. Mr. Price had sent his car out and in it they were driven to the station, ten miles away. It was moonlight. The pine trees along the road tossed their green hair in the wind. The long boughs swept the ground. The trees clutched the earth with their roots as if in a frenzy. They would not give way. At the deserted station one light burned over the window where the telegraph operator worked. They sat for a long time in the dim waiting room, until the big train, fiery and terrible, rushed out of nothing and came to a standstill at the end of the platform. When they went into the long dim car hung with green curtains, every one was asleep. Mrs. Price helped her daughter to undress and Winnie lay down on her side in the lower berth with the window shade up. As she lay there and the train began to move, the oppression of the last few weeks culminated in her emotions, in an unreasoning panic, and she imagined that she was already dead. It was foggy. The train passed through a railway yard and Winnie saw rows of empty cars, long and low, that were like monsters with lusterless hides and opaque eyes, submerged in mist. Hundreds of dull eyes stared from the dimly shining windows, the pale eyes of the cars. Delicate bridges floated over her head as the train passed beneath them, and the swinging arms of derricks and huge machines, lifted through the mist, were as frail as lace.