The schemings to obtain and to hide Gerald’s letters at the shop, and to reply to them!  The far more complex and dangerous duplicity practised upon her majestic aunt at Axe!  The visits to the Axe post-office!  The three divine meetings with Gerald at early morning by the canal-feeder, when he had told her of his inheritance and of the harshness of his uncle Boldero, and with a rush of words had spread before her the prospect of eternal bliss!  The nights of fear!  The sudden, dizzy acquiescence in his plan, and the feeling of universal unreality which obsessed her!  The audacious departure from her aunt’s, showering a cascade of appalling lies!  Her dismay at Knype Station!  Her blush as she asked for a ticket to London!  The ironic, sympathetic glance of the porter, who took charge of her trunk!  And then the thunder of the incoming train!  Her renewed dismay when she found that it was very full, and her distracted plunge into a compartment with six people already in it!  And the abrupt reopening of the carriage-door and that curt inquisition from an inspector:  “Where for, please?  Where for?  Where for?” Until her turn was reached:  “Where for, miss?” and her weak little reply:  “Euston”!  And more violent blushes!  And then the long, steady beating of the train over the rails, keeping time to the rhythm of the unanswerable voice within her breast:  “Why are you here?  Why are you here?” And then Rugby; and the awful ordeal of meeting Gerald, his entry into the compartment, the rearrangement of seats, and their excruciatingly painful attempts at commonplace conversation in the publicity of the carriage! (She had felt that that part of the enterprise had not been very well devised by Gerald.) And at last London; the thousands of cabs, the fabulous streets, the general roar, all dream-surpassing, intensifying to an extraordinary degree the obsession of unreality, the illusion that she could not really have done what she had done, that she was not really doing what she was doing!

Supremely and finally, the delicious torture of the clutch of terror at her heart as she moved by Gerald’s side through the impossible adventure!  Who was this rash, mad Sophia?  Surely not herself!

The knock at the door was impatiently repeated.

“Come in,” she said timidly.

Gerald Scales came in.  Yes, beneath that mien of a commercial traveller who has been everywhere and through everything, he was very nervous.  It was her privacy that, with her consent, he had invaded.  He had engaged the bedroom only with the intention of using it as a retreat for Sophia until the evening, when they were to resume their travels.  It ought not to have had any disturbing significance.  But the mere disorder on the washstand, a towel lying on one of the cane chairs, made him feel that he was affronting decency, and so increased his jaunty nervousness.  The moment was painful; the moment was difficult beyond his skill to handle it naturally.