I’ve got my sea-legs … this is riding—not just straining along trying to forget the wobbly bicycle, but feeling it wobble and being able to control it … being able to look about easily … there will be a harvest moon this month, rolling up huge and hot, suddenly over the edge of a field; the last moon. I shall see that anyhow whatever the holiday is like. It will be cold again in the winter. Perhaps I shan’t feel so cold this winter.
She recognised the figure the instant she saw it. It was as if she had been riding the whole day to meet it. Completely forgotten it had been all the time at the edge of the zest of her ride. It had been everywhere all the time and there it was at last dim and distant and unmistakable … coming horribly along, a murk in the long empty road. She slowed up looking furtively about. The road had been empty for so long. It stretched invisibly away behind, empty. There was no sound of anything coming along; nothing but the squeak squeak of her gear-case; bitter empty fields on either side, greying away to the twilight, the hedges sharp and dark, enemies; nothing ahead but the bare road, carrying the murky figure; there all the time; and bound to come. She rode on at her usual pace struggling for an absorption so complete as to make her invisible, but was held back by her hatred of herself for having wondered whether he had seen her. The figure was growing more distinct. Murky. Murk from head to foot. Wearing openly like a coat the expression that could be seen hidden inside everybody. She had made an enemy of him. It was too late. The voice in her declaring sympathy, claiming kinship faded faint and far away within her … hullo old boy, isn’t it a bloody world … he would know it had come too late. He came walking along, slowly walking like someone in a procession or a quickly moving funeral; like someone in a procession, who must go on. He was surrounded by people, pressed in and down by them, wanting to kill everyone with a look and run, madly, to root up trees and tear down the landscape and get outside … he is myself. … He stood still. Her staring eyes made him so clear that she saw his arrested face just before he threw out an arm and came on, stumbling. Measuring the width of the roadway she rode on slowly along the middle of it, pressing steadily and thoughtlessly forward, her eyes fixed on the far-off spaces of the world she used to know, towards a barrier of swirling twilight. He was quite near, slouching and thinking and silently talking, on and on. He was all right poor thing. She put forth all her strength and shot past him in a sharp curve, her eye just seeing that he turned and stood, swaying.
What a blessing he was drunk what a blessing he was drunk she chattered busily, trying to ignore her trembling limbs. Again and again as she steadied and rode sturdily and blissfully on came the picture of herself saying with confidential eagerness as she dismounted “I say—make haste—there’s a madman coming down the road—get behind the hedge till he’s gone—I’m going for the police.” A man would not have been afraid. Then men are more independent than women. Women can never go very far from the protection of men—because they are physically inferior. But men are afraid of mad bulls. … They have to resort to tricks. What was that I was just thinking? Something I ought to remember. Women have to be protected. But men explain it the wrong way. It was the same thing. … The polite protective man was the same; if he relied on his strength. The world is the most sickening hash. … I’m so sorry for you. I hate humanity too. Isn’t it a lovely day? Isn’t it? Just look.
The dim road led on into the darkness of what appeared to be a private estate. The light from the lamp fell upon wide gates fastened back. The road glimmered on ahead with dense darkness on either side. There had been no turning. The
