CHAPTER XII.
'Adieu! she cries, and waved her lily hand.' The few tattered clouds of the morning enlarged and united, the sun withdrew behind them to emerge no more that day, and the evening drew to a close in drifts of rain.

The water-drops beat like duck shot against the window of the railway-carriage containing Stephen and Elfride.
The journey from Plymouth to Paddington, by even the most headlong express, allows quite enough leisure for passion of any sort to cool.
Elfride's excitement had passed off, and she sat in a kind of stupor during the latter half of the journey.

She was aroused by the clanging of the maze of rails over which they traced their way at the entrance to the station.
Is this London ?' she said.
'Yes, darling,' said Stephen in a tone of assurance he was far from feeling.

To him, no less than to her, the reality so greatly differed from the prefiguring.
She peered out as well as the window, beaded with drops, would allow her, and saw only the lamps, which had just been lit, blinking in the wet atmosphere, and rows of hideous zinc chimney-pipes in dim relief against the sky.

She writhed uneasily, as when a thought is swelling in the mind which must cause much pain at its deliverance in words.