I
believe that any woman would rather trust a man. The difficulty in such
a delicate case was how to get on terms.
So we held our peace in the odious uproar of that wide roadway thronged
with heavy carts. Great vans carrying enormous piled-up loads advanced
swaying like mountains. It was as if the whole world existed only for
selling and buying and those who had nothing to do with the movement of
merchandise were of no account.
"You must be tired," I said. One had to say something if only to assert
oneself against that wearisome, passionless and crushing uproar. She
raised her eyes for a moment. No, she was not. Not very. She had not
walked all the way. She came by train as far as Whitechapel Station and
had only walked from there.
She had had an ugly pilgrimage; but whether of love or of necessity who
could tell? And that precisely was what I should have liked to get at.
This was not however a question to be asked point-blank, and I could not
think of any effective circumlocution. It occurred to me too that she
might conceivably know nothing of it herself--I mean by reflection.
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