Monsell vastly preferred Kensington to Chassingford the matter was easy to arrange. Yet almost as soon as the train pulled up at Chassingford’s wind-swept station she wished she were back in London again. It was the hour of twilight; the sky was grey with heavy rain clouds, and the station lamps creaked and jangled as the wind shook them. The stationmaster touched his cap to Philip as they passed the ticket barrier; Philip replied by a sombre smile. There seemed to her to be an air of melancholy brooding over the place. As the horse-drawn cab squelched through the mud of the station-yard and turned at last into the High Street, she felt a sudden sickening pull of depression—an almost physical sensation that gripped her like pain. The green-white gas lamps of the shops lit up Philip’s face in passing; he was sitting rigidly upright in his corner of the cab. His face was drawn and pale, a witness of the struggle from which he had just emerged; but in his eyes there was a keener, fiercer light, as of, perhaps, the victory won.
