How good, after all, to be independent as well as free! How great
to drift with the tide of innocent women and law-abiding men, once more
one of themselves, and not even a magnet for morbid curiosity! That
would come soon enough; the present was all the more to be enjoyed; and
even the vagueness of the immediate future, even the lack of definite
plans, had a glamor of their own in eyes that were yet to have their
fill of street lamps and shop windows and omnibuses and hansom cabs.
The policeman under the bridge was a joy in himself; he refreshed
Rachel's memory as to the way, without giving her an unnecessary look;
and he called her "madam" into the bargain! After all, it was not every
policeman who had been on duty at the Old Bailey, nor one in many
thousands of the population who had gained admission to the court.
Yet if Rachel had relieved the tedium of her trial by using her eyes a
little more; if, for example, she had condescended to look twice at the
handful of mere spectators beyond the reporters on her right, she could
scarcely have failed to recognize the good-looking, elderly man who was
at her heels when she took her ticket at Blackfriars Bridge.
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