THE DARK ROOM
It was after midnight when Maggie was turned out on to the long grim platform of the London station.On that other London arrival of hers the terminus had been a boiling cauldron of roar and rattle.Now everything was dead and asleep.No trains moved; they slept, ancient monsters, chained down with dirt and fog.Two or three porters crept slothfully as though hypnotised.The face of the great clock, golden in the dusk, dominated, like a heathen god, the scene.Maggie asked a porter the way to the Station Hotel.He showed her; she climbed stairs, pushed back swing doors, trod oil-clothed passages, and arrived at a tired young woman who told her that she could have a room.
Arrived there, herself somnambulistic, she flung off her clothes, crept into bed, and was instantly asleep.
Next morning she kept to her room; she went down the long dusty stairs before one o'clock because she was hungry, and she discovered the restaurant and had a meal there; but all the time she was expecting Martin to appear.Every step seemed to be his, every voice to have an echo of his tones.Then in the dusky afternoon she decided that she would be cowardly no longer.She started off on her search for No.13A Lynton Street, King's Cross.
She searched through a strange blue opaque light which always afterwards she recollected as accompanying her with mystery, as though it followed her about deliberately veiling her from the rest of the world.She felt different from them all; she found an omnibus that was going to King's Cross, but when she was inside it and looked at the people around her she felt of them all that they had no reality beside the intensity of her own search.She, hot like a fiery coal, existed in a land of filmy ghosts.She repeated to herself over and over, "No.13A Lynton Street, King's Cross."She got out opposite the huge station and looked about her.She saw a policeman and went across to him.
"Can you tell me where Lynton Street is, please?" she asked him.
He smiled."Yes, miss.Down on your right, then first to your right again."She thanked him and wanted for a silly moment to remain with him.