Her feet tramped happily across the square of polished roadway patterned with shadows and along the quiet clean sunlit pavement behind the gardens. It was always bright and clean and quiet and happy there, like the pavement of a road behind a sea-front. The sound of a mail van rattling heavily along Woburn Place changed to a soft rumble as she turned in between the great houses of Tansley Street and walked along its silent corridor of afternoon light. Sparrows were cheeping in the stillness. To be able to go down the quiet street and on into the squares--on a bicycle.... I must learn somehow to get my balance. To go along, like in that moment when he took his hands off the handle-bars, in knickers and a short skirt and all the summer to come.... Everything shone with a greater intensity. Friends and thought and work were nothing compared to being able to ride alone, balanced, going along through the air. On the hall table was a post-card. "Come round on Sunday if you're in town--Irlandisches Ragout. Mag." Her heart stirred; that settled it--the girls wanted her; Mag wanted her. She took Alma's crumpled letter from her pocket and glanced through it once more ... "such a dull Sunday and all your fault. Why did you not come? Come on Saturday _any_ time or Sunday morning if you can't manage the week-end?" What a good thing she had not written promising to go. She would be in London, safe in Kennett Street for Sunday. Mag was quite right; going away unsettled you for the week and you did not _get_ Sunday. She looked at her watch, five-thirty; in half an hour the girls would probably be at Slater's; the London week-end could begin this minute; all the people who half-expected her, the Brooms, the Pernes, Sarah and Harriett, the Wilsons, would be in their homes far away; she safe in Bloomsbury, in the big house the big kind streets, Kennett Street; places they none of them knew; safe for the whole length of the week-end. Saturday had looked so obstructed, with the cycling lesson, and the visit to Miss Szigmondy and the many alternatives for the rest of the time.... "Oh I've got about _fifty_ engagements for Saturday" and now Saturday was clear and she felt equal to anything for the week-end. What a discovery, standing hidden, there in the London house, to drop everything and go down, with all the discarded engagements, all the solicitous protecting friends put aside; easy and alone through the glimmering green squares to the end of the Strand and find Slater's.... I'll never stir out of London again. The girls are right. It isn't worth it. 2 She saw the girls seated at a table at the far end of the big restaurant and shyly advanced. "Hulloh child!" "What you having?" she asked sitting down opposite to them. The empty white table-cloth shone under a brilliant incandescent light; far away down the vista the door opened on the daylit street.