But when she had taken her place beside him, and the crowded journey northward was resumed, Joanna knew that she would have given anything not to have come.

It was not because there were other people in their compartment – a man and two women. It was not because the women, who were evidently well disposed toward Louis, looked distrustfully at the newcomer. Joanna would not have minded these things if only Louis had stood by her. She remembered the many happy hours they had spent in trains, going out to country places for their walks: and some of the most memorable had been merely enhanced by the presence of other people as by every other fetter of circumstance. Louis when he wished, could give her such a sense of the secret warmth between them, that the very disadvantages which might most easily have blown upon their pleasure added a zest.

Why then to-day, after the first flush of greeting, should he lapse away from her in a strange, hostile exhaustion? The unexpectedness of it paralyzed her. His looks were like axes that had been sharpened in secret to sever the bond between them. And he left her quite exposed to the disapproval and curiosity of these onlookers. Was it for this that he had asked her to come away with him?

It would have helped her somewhat if she could have accused him simply. But beyond all easy argument she knew that Louis no less than she was taken unaware. It was one of those things, by no means simple in themselves, which happen suddenly and, as it were, involuntarily. Louis, she was positive, had invited her in good faith. But somewhere a spring had clicked, and here they were, both in some cruel trap, baffling to him as to her.

For a while he made conversation. He had been up half the night, he told her, working at a belated drawing so that it might be in the publisher’s hands that day. Up half the night … and yet had had to rise early this morning to finish it … such a brute it had turned out … Now he was dead tired. Again and again he repeated how tired he was. “Dead tired … down and out … a dead beat old man …” His reiteration chilled her. For he did not want sympathy. That he made clear. Persistently he used his tiredness not to draw her to him as he might have done, but to push her farther and farther away. That he was very tired she pitifully knew. His face was grey and lined with weariness.

Before strangers however they could have no real talk, and presently Louis fell asleep in his corner. Joanna then went out into the corridor and stood there a long time, seeing the flying landscape through sheets of tears.