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Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941

"The Captives"

Now
everything was dead and asleep. No trains moved; they slept, ancient
monsters, chained down with dirt and fog. Two or three porters crept
slothfully as though hypnotised. The face of the great clock, golden
in the dusk, dominated, like a heathen god, the scene. Maggie asked
a porter the way to the Station Hotel. He showed her; she climbed
stairs, pushed back swing doors, trod oil-clothed passages, and
arrived at a tired young woman who told her that she could have a
room.
Arrived there, herself somnambulistic, she flung off her clothes,
crept into bed, and was instantly asleep.
Next morning she kept to her room; she went down the long dusty
stairs before one o'clock because she was hungry, and she discovered
the restaurant and had a meal there; but all the time she was
expecting Martin to appear. Every step seemed to be his, every voice
to have an echo of his tones. Then in the dusky afternoon she
decided that she would be cowardly no longer. She started off on her
search for No. 13A Lynton Street, King's Cross.
She searched through a strange blue opaque light which always
afterwards she recollected as accompanying her with mystery, as
though it followed her about deliberately veiling her from the rest
of the world.


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