But he didn't: he needed no one--no one. He seemed so frail,
she had made sure that he wanted looking after; but he didn't. A
drunkard might have fallen down in the street, needed fetching,
supporting, exhorting; a bully come home with a broken head. But it
seemed as though Ben were, in reality, for all his air of appeal,
sufficient to himself, moving like a steady light through the darkness;
unstirred by so much as a breath of wind.
Overcome by anxiety, she got out of the tram too soon. It had begun to
rain, a dull, dark night, and there was a blur of misty light flooding
the pavement a little way ahead. That must be the hall. She was afraid
of over-shooting the mark. Those trams had such a way of getting going
just as one wanted to be out of them!
But the light was nothing more than a cinema, and she she had a good
quarter of a mile to walk in the wet. The cruel wet!--just like it to
be wet on this night of all nights! Even her optimism was gone. She
kept on thinking of Mrs. Cohen, her flushed face and oddly-glazed eyes;
the queer stiff way in which she moved, held her head.
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