She recognised the figure the instant she saw it. It was as if she had been riding the whole day to meet it. Completely forgotten it had been all the time at the edge of the zest of her ride. It had been everywhere all the time and there it was at last dim and distant and unmistakable ... coming horribly along, a murk in the long empty road. She slowed up looking furtively about. The road had been empty for so long. It stretched invisibly away behind, empty. There was no sound of anything coming along; nothing but the squeak squeak of her gear-case; bitter empty fields on either side, greying away to the twilight, the hedges sharp and dark, enemies; nothing ahead but the bare road, carrying the murky figure; there all the time; and bound to come. She rode on at her usual pace struggling for an absorption so complete as to make her invisible, but was held back by her hatred of herself for having wondered whether he had seen her. The figure was growing more distinct. Murky. Murk from head to foot. Wearing openly like a coat the expression that could be seen hidden inside everybody. She had made an enemy of him. It was too late. The voice in her declaring sympathy, claiming kinship faded faint and far away within her ... hullo old boy, isn't it a bloody world ... he would know it had come too late. He came walking along, slowly walking like someone in a procession or a quickly moving funeral; like someone in a procession, who must go on. He was surrounded by people, pressed in and down by them, wanting to kill everyone with a look and run, madly, to root up trees and tear down the landscape and get outside ... he is myself.... He stood still. Her staring eyes made him so clear that she saw his arrested face just before he threw out an arm and came on, stumbling. Measuring the width of the roadway she rode on slowly along the middle of it, pressing steadily and thoughtlessly forward, her eyes fixed on the far-off spaces of the world she used to know, towards a barrier of swirling twilight. He was quite near, slouching and thinking and silently talking, on and on. He was all right poor thing. She put forth all her strength and shot past him in a sharp curve, her eye just seeing that he turned and stood, swaying.