She turned and, her heart beating, hurried home. The house door was
still ajar. She pushed it back, slipped inside, caught her breath
and listened. Then she closed the door softly behind her, and with
that little act of attempted secrecy realised that she was now a
rebel, that things could never be, for her, the same again as they
had been a quarter of an hour ago. That glittering crowd, the lamps,
the smells, the sounds, had concentrated themselves into a little
fiery charm that held her heart within a flaming circle. She felt
the most audacious creature in the world--and also the most
ignorant. Not helpless--no, never helpless--but so ignorant that all
her life that had seemed to her, a quarter of an hour ago, so
tensely crowded with events and crises was now empty and barren like
the old straw-smelling cab at home. She did not want to offend her
aunts and hurt their feelings, but she was a living, breathing,
independent creature and she must go her own way. Neither they nor
their chapel should stop her--no, not the chapel nor any one in it.
She was standing, motionless, in the dark cold hall, wondering
whether any one had heard her enter, when she was suddenly conscious
of two eyes that watched her--two steady fiery eyes suspended as it
seemed in mid air.
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