. Words, everywhere. Words, six-feet high. Words, shrieking and bellowing: Leather and Grindery.—Shop To Let.—Broughams & Neat Carriages.—Paper-Stainers.—Supported Entirely.—To Let!— To Let!—By Voluntary Subscription.—
There are words, all over the face of London. I see them, and cover my eyes. When I look again we have sunk: brick walls, thick with soot, have risen about the train and cast the coach in gloom. Then comes a great, vast, vaulting roof of tarnished glass, hung about with threads of smoke and steam and fluttering birds. We shudder to a frightful halt. There is the shrieking of other engines, a thudding of doors, the pressing passage—it seems to me—of a thousand, thousand people.
''Paddington terminus,'' says Richard. ''Come on.''
He moves and speaks more quickly here. He is changed. He does not look at me—I wish he would, now. He finds a man to take our bags. We stand in a line of people—a queue, I know the word—and wait for a carriage—a hackney, I know that word also, from my uncle''s books. One may kiss in a hackney; one may take any kind of liberty with one''s lover; one tells one''s driver to go about the Regent''s Park. I know London. London is a city of opportunities fulfilled. This place, of jostling and clamour, I do not know. It is thick with purposes I do not understand. It is marked with words, but I cannot read it. The regularity, the numberless repetition, of