Quicksand - Chapters Four and Five Summary

On the train, Helga is having second thoughts about having left Naxos and cannot stop thinking about Dr. Anderson. She is sad that she may have maligned her mother, a Scandinavian woman whose happiness turned into poverty and sordidness. Helga recalls her misery with white step-siblings and an argumentative stepfather, and how even then, she understood the need her mother had to remarry. Helga's mother died when Helga was 15, and Uncle Peter had sent her to a school for Negroes, where she became increasingly alienated and lonely. She realizes she would never have married James Vayle, even if she'd stayed in Naxos because she did not really love him.

Helga manages to get a sleeping berth at twice the price after being rejected upon her first request for one. She goes to sleep...