They all seemed to get up to go at the same moment and when they drifted out into the street seemed all to be going the same way. Miriam found herself walking along the Farringdon Road between Mr. Bowdoin and the shorter of the two other men, longing for solitude and to be free to wander slowly along the new addition to her map of London at night. Even with Bohemians evenings did not end when they ended, but led to the forced companionship of walking home. The tall man and the two women were marching along ahead at a tremendous pace and she was obliged to hasten her steps to keep up with her companions' evident intention of keeping them in view. Perhaps at the top of the road they would all separate. We will escort Miss Henderson to her home and then I'll come on with you to Highgate. To _High_gate--exclaimed Miriam almost stopping. Are you going to walk to Highgate _to-night_? They both laughed. Oh yes said Mr. Bowdoin that's nothing. _Highgate._ The mere thought of its northern remoteness seemed to be an insult to London. No wonder she had found herself a stranger with these people. Walking out to Highgate at night and getting up as usual the next morning. Magnificent strong hard thing to do. Horrible. Walking out to Highgate, "talking all the time" ... they could never have a minute to realise anything at all; rushing along saying things that covered everything and never stopping to realise, talking _about_ people and things and never being or knowing anything, and perpetually coming to the blank emptiness of _Highgate_ ... their unconsciousness of everything made them the right sort of people to have the trouble of living in Highgate. They probably walked about with knapsacks on Sunday. But to them even the real country could not be country. All 'circles' must be like that in some way; doing things by agreement. The men talking confidently about them, _completely_ ignorant of any sort of reality.... She came out of her musings when they turned into the Euston Road and ironically watched the men keeping up their talk across the continual breaking up of the group by passing pedestrians. _You'll_ have to walk _back_ she interrupted, suddenly turning to Mr. Bowdoin; the buses will have stopped. I never ride in omnibuses frowned Mr. Bowdoin. I shall be back by two.... Miriam waited a moment inside the door at Tansley Street listening for silence. The evening fell away from her with the departing footsteps of the two men. She opened the door upon the high quiet empty blue-lit street and moved out into a tranquil immensity. It was everywhere. Into her consciousness of the unpredictable incidents of to-morrow's Wimpole Street day, over the sure excitement of Eve's arrival in the evening flowed the light-footed leaping sense of a day new begun, an inexhaustible blissfulness, everything melted away into it. It seemed to smite her, calling for some spoken acknowledgment of its presence, alive and real in the heart of the London darkness. It was