Why is it that no one seems to know what north London is? They say it is healthy and open. Perhaps I shall meet someone who feels like I do about it and would get ill and die there. It is not imagination. It is a real feeling that comes upon me.... The north London omnibus reached the tide of the Euston Road and pulled up at Portland Road station. Miriam got out weak and ill. The first breath of the central air revived her. Standing there, the omnibus looked like any other omnibus. She crossed the road, averting her eyes from the north-going roads on either side of the church and got into the inmost corner of another bus. She wanted to ride about, getting from bus to bus, inside London until her misery had passed. Opposite her was a stout woman in a rusty bonnet and shawl and dust-defaced black skirt, looking about with eyes that did not see what they looked at, all the London consciousness in her. Miriam sat gazing at her. The woman's eyes crossed her and passed unperturbed.... The lane of little shops flowed away, their huddled detail crushing together, wide shop windows glittered steadily by and narrowed away. When the bus stopped at Gower Street the spire of St. Pancras church came into sight spindling majestically up, screened by trees. The trees in Endsleigh Gardens came along gently waving their budding branches in bright sunshine. The colour of the gardens was so intense that the sun must just be going to set behind Euston Station. The large houses moved steadily behind the gardens in blocks, bright white, with large quiet streets opening their vistas in between the blocks, leading to green freshness and then safely on down into Soho. The long square came to an end. The shrub-trimmed base of St. Pancras church came heavily nearer and stopped. As Miriam got out of the bus she watched its great body rise in clear sharp outline against the blue. Its clock was booming the hour out across the gardens through the houses and down into the squares. On this side its sound was broken up by the narrow roar of the Euston Road and the clamour coming right and left from the two great stations.