A QUESTION OF EXTERNALS It was a grey November afternoon two days later.

A faint, filmy suggestion of fog hung about the streets, just enough to remind the Londoner of November possibilities, but in the western sky hung a golden sun, and underfoot there was the blessing of dry pavements.
Penelope stood at one of the windows of the flat in Edenhall Mansions, and looked down at the busy thoroughfare below.

Hither and thither men and women hurried about their business; there seemed few indeed nowadays of the leisured loiterers through life.

A tube strike had only recently been brought to a conclusion, and Londoners of all classes were endeavouring to make good the time lost during those days of enforced stagnation.

Unfortunately, time that is lost can never be recovered.
Even Eternity itself can't give us back the hours which have been flung away.
Rather bitterly Penelope reflected that, in spite of all our vaunted civilisation and education, men still resorted, as did their ancestors of old, to brute force in order to obtain their wishes.