"Ourselves. Rising on the ashes of our dead selves. Lord, it's midnight----" The chill of the outside night, solitude and her cold empty room.... "I'm going to bed." "So am I. We shall be in bed, Miriam, five minutes after you have gone." Jan went off for the hot water bottles. "All right, I'm going----" Miriam bent for her shoes. The soles were dry, scorching; they scorched her feet as she forced on the shoes; one sole cracked across as she put her foot to the ground ... she braced the muscles of her face and said nothing. It must be forgotten before she left the room that they were nearly new and her only pair; two horrid ideas, nagging and keeping things away. 8 Outside in the air daylight grew strong and clear in Miriam's mind. Patches of day came in a bright sheen from the moonlit puddles, distributed over the square. She crossed the road to the narrow pathway shadowed by the trees that ran round the long oblong enclosure. From this dark pathway the brightness of the wet moonlit roadway was brighter and she could see façades that caught the moonlight. There was something trying to worry her, some little thing that did not matter at all, but that some part of her had put away to worry over and was now wanting to consider. Mag's affairs ... no she had decided about that. It might be true about blunted sensibilities; but she had meant for some reason to let that other man kiss her, and people never ask advice until they have made up their minds what they are going to do and Mag was Mag quite apart from anything that might happen. She would still be Mag if she were old ... or mad. That was a firm settled real thing, real and absolute in the daylight of the moonlit square. She wandered slowly on humming a tune; every inch of the way would be lovely. The figure of a man in an overcoat and a bowler hat loomed towards her on the narrow pathway and stopped. The man raised his hat, and his face showed smiling with the moonlight on it. Miriam had a moment's fear; but the man's attitude was deprecating and there was her song; it was partly her own fault. But why why ... fierce anger at the recurrence of this kind of occurrence seized her. She wanted him out of the way and wanted him to know how angry she was at the interruption. "Well," she snapped angrily, coming to a standstill in the moonlit gap. "Oh" said the man a little breathlessly in a lame broken tone, "I thought you were going this way." "So I am," retorted Miriam in a loud angry shaking tone, "obviously." The man stepped quickly into the gutter and walked quickly away across the road. St. Pancras church chimed the quarter.