The snow made automobiling impossible, and at half past nine that evening Ditmar had escorted Janet to the station in a cab, and she had taken the train for Hampton.  For a while she sat as in a trance.  She knew that something had happened, something portentous, cataclysmic, which had irrevocably changed her from the Janet Bumpus who had left Hampton that same morning—­an age ago.  But she was unable to realize the metamorphosis.  In the course of a single day she had lived a lifetime, exhausted the range of human experience, until now she was powerless to feel any more.  The car was filled with all sorts and conditions of people returning to homes scattered through the suburbs and smaller cities north of Boston—­a mixed, Sunday-night crowd; and presently she began, in a detached way, to observe them.  Their aspects, their speech and manners had the queer effect of penetrating her consciousness without arousing the emotional judgments of approval or disapproval which normally should have followed.  Ordinarily she might have felt a certain sympathy for the fragile young man on the seat beside her who sat moodily staring through his glasses at the floor:  and the group across the aisle would surely have moved her to disgust.  Two couples were seated vis-a-vis, the men apparently making fun of a “pony” coat one of the girls was wearing.  In spite of her shrieks, which drew general attention, they pulled it from her back—­an operation regarded by the conductor himself with tolerant amusement.  Whereupon her companion, a big, blond Teuton with an inane guffaw, boldly thrust an arm about her waist and held her while he presented the tickets.  Janet beheld all this as one sees dancers through a glass, without hearing the music.

Behind her two men fell into conversation.

“I guess there’s well over a foot of snow.  I thought we’d have an open winter, too.”

“Look out for them when they start in mild!”

“I was afraid this darned road would be tied up if I waited until morning.  I’m in real estate, and there’s a deal on in my town I’ve got to watch every minute....”

Even the talk between two slouch-hatted millhands, foreigners, failed at the time to strike Janet as having any significance.  They were discussing with some heat the prospect of having their pay reduced by the fifty-four hour law which was to come into effect on Monday.  They denounced the mill owners.

“They speed up the machine and make work harder,” said one.  “I think we goin’ to have a strike sure.”

“Bad sisson too to have strike,” replied the second pessimistically.  “It will be cold winter, now.”