else could write books like that; no one else knew so much about everything. Right or wrong it was impossible to give up hearing all he had to say ... and they were kind, alive to one's life in a way other people were not.... * * * * * She strolled to the window, finding renewal in the familiar creaking of her floor in the house, here.... She went back across the happy creaking and turned out the gas and came again to the window. The sky was dark enough to show a brilliant star; here and there in the darkness of the opposite house fronts was an oblong of golden light. The faint blue light coming up from the street lit up the outer edges of the grey stone window-sills. The air under the wooden roof of the window space was almost as close as it was under the immense height of upper coolness.... Down at the end of the road were the lamplit green trees; plane-tree shadows on the narrow pavement. She put on her hat in the dark. Crossing the roadway to reach the narrow strip of pavement running along under the trees she saw single dark figures standing at intervals against the brilliant lamplit green and swerved back to the wide pavement. She had forgotten they would be there. They stood like sentinels.... Behind them the lamplit green flared feverishly.... In the shadow of St. Pancras church there were others, small and black in a desert ... lost quickly in the great shadow where the passers-by moved swiftly through from light to light. Out in the Euston Road along the pavements shadowed by trees and left in darkness by the high spindling shaded candles of the lamps along the centre of the roadway, they came walking, a foreign walk, steadily slow and wavy and expressive, here and there amongst the shapeless expressionless forms of the London wayfarers. The high stone entrance of Euston Station shone white across the way. Anyone can go into a station. Within the entrance gravelled darkness opened out on either side. Silence all round and ahead where silent buildings had here and there a lit window. Where was the station? Immense London darkness and stillness alone and deserted like a country place at night, just beyond the noises of the Euston Road. A murder might happen here. The cry of an engine sounded, muffled and far away. Just ahead in the centre of the approaching wide mass of building was a wide dimly lit stone archway. The rattle of a hansom sounded from an open space beyond. Its light appeared swaying swiftly forward and lit the archway. The hansom bowled through in startling silence, nothing but the jingle and dumb leathery rattle of the harness, and passed, the plonking of the horse's hoofs and the swift slur of the wheels sounding out again in the open space. The archway had little side pathways for passengers roofed by small arching extensions of the central arch ... _indiarubber_ ... pavement to muffle ... the building was a hotel; Edwards daylight Family Hotel ...