"That's just where it was, miss--to get _at_ the blessed things. And the
want of right help--it maddened me to stand and see 'em muff it. This
ain't a place, like, for anything organized. They don't come up to a
_reel_ emergency."
She passed out of the door that opened toward the village and met a
great acrid gust. She heard a far-off windy roar which, in her dismay,
she took for that of flames a mile away, and which, the first instant,
acted upon her as a wild solicitation. "I must go there." She had
scarcely spoken before the same omen had changed into an appalling
check.
Her vivid friend, moreover, had got before her; he clearly suffered from
the nature of the control he had to exercise. "Don't do that, miss--you
won't care for it at all." Then as she waveringly stood her ground,
"It's not a place for a young lady, nor, if you'll believe me, a sight
for them as are in any way affected."
Fleda by this time knew in what way she was affected: she became limp
and weak again; she felt herself give everything up. Mixed with the
horror, with the kindness of the station-master, with the smell of
cinders and the riot of sound, was the raw bitterness of a hope that she
might never again in life have to give up so much at such short notice.
She heard herself repeat mechanically, yet as if asking it for the first
time: "Poynton's _gone_?"
The man hesitated. "What can you call it, miss, if it ain't really
saved?"
A minute later she had returned with him to the waiting-room, where, in
the thick swim of things, she saw something like the disk of a clock.
"Is there an up-train?" she asked.
"In seven minutes."
She came out on the platform: everywhere she met the smoke. She covered
her face with her hands. "I'll go back."
Henry James's Books.