She hated the place--the station, the beach, the town, and the woods--even more than she had done before.She hated the place--but she loved the people.
The place was sneering, self-satisfied, contemptuous, inhuman, like some cynical, debased speculator making a sure profit out of the innocent weaknesses of human nature.As she turned and looked she could see the whole ugly town with the spire of St.John's-Paul's church, raised self-righteously above it.
The town was like a prison hemmed in by the dark woods and the oily sea.She felt a sudden terrified consciousness of her own imprisonment.It was perhaps from that moment that she began to be definitely unhappy in her own life, that she realised with that sudden inspiration that is given to us on occasion, how hostile Grace was becoming, how strange and unreal was Paul, and how far away was every one else!
Just below her on the sand a happy family played-some babies, two little boys digging, the father smoking, his hat tilted over his eyes against the sun, the mother finding biscuits in a bag for the youngest infant.It was a very merry family and full of laughter.