Helena lit a candle and went to her bedroom. She quickly packed her
dress-basket. As she stood before the mirror to put on her hat, her
eyes, gazing heavily, met her heavy eyes in the mirror. She glanced away
swiftly as if she had been burned.
'How stupid I look!' she said to herself. 'And Siegmund, how is he, I
wonder?' She wondered how Siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him,
how he felt, how he looked. She thought of him protectively.
Having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. Her mother was
ready, with a white lace scarf round her neck. After a short time Louisa
came in. She dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank into
a chair.
'I don't want to go, Nell,' she said, after a few moments of silence.
'Why, how is that?' asked Helena, not surprised, but condescending, as
to a child.
'Oh, I don't know; I'm tired,' said the other petulantly.
'Of course you are. What do you expect, after a day like this?' said
Helena.
'And rushing about packing,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, still in an
exaggerated manner, this time scolding playfully.
'Oh, I don't know. I don't think I want to go, dear,' repeated Louisa
dejectedly.
'Well, it is time we set out,' replied Helena, rising. 'Will you carry
the basket or the violin, Mater?' Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.
The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is only
smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken day.
Such was Helena's longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In one
corner Olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them. Helena sat
mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights of a
third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her sunburned
face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation in her
blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering. Everything
was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur of the
shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: 'Two hundred and forty
miles--two hundred and forty miles.'