2 As she neared Colnbrook the road grew heavier and a closer mist lay over the fields. It was too soon for fatigue but her knees already seemed heavy with effort. Getting off at the level crossing she found that her skirt was sodden and her zouave spangled all over with beads of moisture. She walked shivering across the rails and remounted rapidly, hoisting into the saddle a draggled person that was not her own and riding doggedly on beating back all thoughts but the thought of sunrise. 3 "Is this Reading?" The cyclist smiled as he shouted back. He knew she knew. But he liked shouting too. If she had yelled Have you got a _soul_, it would have been just the same. If everyone were on bicycles all the time you could talk to everybody, all the time, about anything ... sailing so steadily along with two free legs ... how much easier it must be with your knees going so slowly up and down ... how _funny_ I must look with my knees racing up and down in lumps of skirt. But I'm here, at the midday rest. It must be nearly twelve. Drawing into the curb near a confectioner's she thought of buying two bars of plain chocolate. There _was_ some sort of truth in the Swiss Family Robinson. If you went on, it was all right. There was only death. People frightened you about things that were not there. I will never listen to anybody again; or be frightened. That cyclist knew, as long as he was on his bicycle. Perhaps he has people who make him not himself. He can always get away again. Men can always get away. I am going to lead a man's life always getting away....