For a part of the way the train ran beside the sea, and the tide was far out, leaving bare the great, clean stretches of sand. The tide – that was what Louis was like in his love! The shoreward waves had been so strong that she had not realized the ebb of the whole ocean of his being. He was too old. He had said it, and she had shrunk from it with closed eyes. He was too old – an ebbing, dying man. No power could alter that grievous, icy fact. She saw that now. And yet, and yet – she cried out that she loved him. If he would but allow her to share in this death of his, she would surely go through with it. She loved him so much. So much did she long to be faithful.

As the landscape darkened, however – the tears stiffening painfully on Joanna’s face – and Louis still slept on in unconsciousness, she became subject for a time to less exalted feelings. What right, she asked herself angrily, had this man so to humiliate her? He need not have suggested her coming to-day. But having done so, whatever his feelings he should have deferred this treacherous blow. In the circumstances it was mean and shameful of him. She would not tamely submit to it. And she actually allowed herself to be beaten up into what is often known as “spirit,” by remembering with what difficulty she had got together the money for her ticket.

This mood, the more wretched for being foreign to her nature, was aggravated by Louis’s behaviour in the restaurant car during dinner. As always he revived, superficially at least, under the stimulus of food; but on this occasion whatever energy he thus gained was vindictive. Having glanced without remark at his companion’s inflamed eyes, he proceeded to talk with a certain vivacity of their fellow-travellers. He pointed out the extraordinary likeness between the man in the corner and a bust of the youthful Nero in the British Museum. And had Joanna noticed the clear-eyed, pretty girl who had sat opposite to him?

Joanna had of course noticed her, and with that wistful admiration we accord, when deeply harrowed ourselves, to one who is as yet untouched by life. The girl in question was merry, quite young, and of a type essentially English. At any other time Joanna would have listened equably to any praise of her. But to-day there was an element in Louis which made his eulogy of this other unendurable. As clearly as his weary glance had earlier showed Joanna that her new way of wearing her hair with a fringe (impulsively adopted that morning) was distasteful to him, so clearly did he now seize upon this nice young thing’s charm as an instrument of repudiation. At his pointed enthusiasm Joanna arose from her untasted dinner, and stumbled along the cruelly swaying corridor till she reached an empty compartment.