and costermongers carts, which she hoped were
slums, literally have had her musket on her shoulder,
have announced herself as freshly on the warpath.
But for the fear of overdoing this character she
would here and there have begun conversation, have
asked her way; in spite of the fact that, as that
would help the requirements of adventure, her way
was exactly what she wanted not to know. The
difficulty was that she at last accidentally found it;
she had come out, she presently saw, at the Regent's
Park, round which, on two or three occasions with
Kate Croy, her public chariot had solemnly rolled.
But she went into it further now; this was the real
thing; the real thing was to be quite away from the
pompous roads, well within the centre and on the
stretches of shabby grass. Here were benches and
smutty sheep; here were idle lads at games of ball,
with their cries mild in the thick air; here were wan
derers, anxious and tired like herself; here doubt
less were hundreds of others just in the same box.
Their box, their great common anxiety, what was it,
in this grim breathing-space, but the practical ques
tion of life? They could live if they would; that
is, like herself, they had been told so; she saw them
all about her, on seats, digesting the information,
feeling it altered, assimilated, recognising it again
as something, in a slightly different shape, familiar
enough, the blessed old truth that they would live
if they could. All she thus shared with them made
her wish to sit in their company; which she so far

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p272 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p273w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p274

v?