her lips-angry and despairing.  She would never—­never get used to her position; it was no good!  And again she had the longing of her dream, to tuck her face away into that coat, smell the scent of the frieze, snuggle in, be protected, and forget.  ’If I had been that poor lonely little woman,’ she thought, ’and had lost everything, I should have gone into the water.  I should have rushed and jumped.  It’s only luck that I’m alive.  I won’t look at that old man again:  then I shan’t feel so bad.’

She had bought some chocolate at the station, and nibbled it, gazing steadily at the fields covered with daisies and the first of the buttercups and cowslips.  The three soldiers were talking now in carefully lowered voices.  The words:  “women,” “under control,” “perfect plague,” came to her, making her ears burn.  In the hypersensitive mood caused by the strain of yesterday, her broken night, and the emotional meeting with the little woman, she felt as if they were including her among those “women.”  ‘If we stop, I’ll get out,’ she thought.  But when the train did stop it was they who got out.  She felt the old General’s keen veiled glance sum her up for the last time, and looked full at him just for a moment.  He touched his cap, and said:  “Will you have the window up or down?” and lingered to draw it half-way up.’  His punctiliousness made her feel worse than ever.  When the train had started again she roamed up and down her empty carriage; there was no more a way out of her position than out of this rolling cushioned carriage!  And then she seemed to hear Fort’s voice saying:  ’Sit down, please!’ and to feel his fingers clasp her wrist, Oh! he was nice and comforting; he would never reproach or remind her!  And now, probably, she would never see him again.

The train drew up at last.  She did not know where George lodged, and would have to go to his hospital.  She planned to get there at half past nine, and having eaten a sort of breakfast at the station, went forth into the town.  The seaside was still wrapped in the early glamour which haunts chalk of a bright morning.  But the streets were very much alive.  Here was real business of the war.  She passed houses which had been wrecked.  Trucks clanged and shunted, great lorries rumbled smoothly by.  Sea—­and Air-planes were moving like great birds far up in the bright haze, and khaki was everywhere.  But it was the sea Noel wanted.  She made her way westward to a little beach; and, sitting down on a stone, opened her arms to catch the sun on her face and chest.  The tide was nearly up, with the wavelets of a blue bright sea.  The great fact, the greatest fact in the world, except the sun; vast and free, making everything human seem small and transitory!  It did her good, like a tranquillising friend.  The sea might be cruel and terrible, awful things it could do, and awful things were being done on it; but its wide level line, its never-ending song, its sane savour, were the best medicine she could possibly have taken.  She rubbed the Shelly sand between her fingers in absurd ecstasy; took off her shoes and stockings, paddled, and sat drying her legs in the sun.