Caroline watched him go with a most illogical sense of being deserted; then the turnstile clicked and she had to release the clutch, letting through a pleasant-looking mother with a daughter of about seventeen, both so happy in each other's company--making a lark of coming out together to hear the band on such a wet night. Caroline's unreasonable feeling of being alone and deserted deepened. For the first time in years, she consciously wanted her own mother--longed for her with an ache of the heart that almost brought tears. She seemed so alone. Aunt Creddle was goodness itself, but had her own family to think of first, of course, and could no longer take quite such a vivid interest in a niece as when her own children were quite little. Uncle Creddle had a steady kindness which nothing could change, but he too was a struggling man with a family. Besides, he was rather hard in some ways beneath his good-nature. She still remembered how he had spoken to her that evening when he found her screaming and playing about those empty houses with the boys.
No, she belonged nowhere: that was it. She did not think as the Creddles did about lots of things, and yet she did not belong to the world which girls like Miss Laura Temple lived in, either. She had got past one sort, and had not found another. All these thoughts passed confusedly through a mind that had been quickened by something incomprehensible in her experiences at Laura Temple's that afternoon. Through her thoughts she heard the hum of the sea, the tinkling fall of heavy rain on asphalt, the faint rising and falling of violin music.
She felt a sudden spirit of rebellion. Why shouldn't she have some fun? She would enjoy herself! She wasn't going to go on like this, letting people in to the promenade, doing housework, practising typewriting. Why did some girls get everything, like Laura Temple, and others nothing? It was not fair. It was not fair----
Then she saw Wilson at the little window. "Good evening. Stormy night!" he said, and passed through without any further remark.
She knew he had come straight from Laura's and was taking a short cut across the parade to his own lodgings, which were beyond the exit towards the north. He had come from no desire to see her. Still he might have spoken a word: he need not have gone through like that, as if it were only Lillie working the turnstile.