The train was in when they reached the station, and he told her to take a seat in it while he got the tickets. But she did not. Its carriages were not yet lit, and it looked black and cold and cheerless, like those burned buildings they had seen at Balerno; and anyway, she did not want to take that train. She would have liked to turn back with him through the dark avenues into the Pentlands. The sunset, which had somehow been as vexing as it was beautiful, would by then have receded utterly before the kind, sleepy darkness, undisturbed there in the valley by the wee-est cottage light. It would be good to lie down for the night on the heather of some ledge on the hillside where one could hear the Logan Burn talking as it ran from the fall, and to look up and see Mr. Yaverland sitting in that nice slouching way he had, a great black shape against the stars. But that was a daft idea. She was annoyed for thinking of anything so foolish, and when he came out and chid her for standing about on the windy platform she found nothing on her lips but a cross murmur.
That did not really matter, for one could not hurt grown-up people. They were always happy. Everybody in the world was happy except her. Without doubt he would think her quite mad if he knew that she was in the grip of a depression that seemed to be wringing misery out of her body and brain as one wrings water out of a bathing-dress, so when they got into the train she turned away, muttered yawningly that she was very tired, and buried her face in the crook of her arm so that he might think she slept. It puzzled her that she felt so disappointed. What had she expected to happen to-day that hadn't happened? Everything had been lovely. Mr. Yaverland had talked most interestingly, and the hills had been very beautiful. She was ashamed of all those tears that she shed more frequently than one would have expected from an intending rival of Pierpont Morgan, but these present tears filled her with terror because they were so utterly irrational. Irrational, too, was the sudden picture that flashed on her mind's eye of Mr. Philip sitting in the opposite corner of the carriage, screwing up his dark face with mocking laughter. "Mr. Philip is driving me mad," she thought to herself. "Some day soon I'll find myself in Morningside Asylum, sticking flowers in my hair and flattering myself I'm Queen Victoria. But I will not go mad. I am going to get on. I am going to be great. But am I? I think I am not." Her face made a wet contorted mask against her sleeve, and a swallowed sob was as sharp in her throat as a fishbone; and there struck through her like an impaling sword a certainty which she could not understand, but which was surely a certificate that there was to be no more happiness, that even if Mr. Philip ceased to persecute her she would still be hungry and tormented.