She went out again, desperate to find him, utterly unable to comprehend her own actions of the morning by which she had brought this about. And in Princes Street, close by the Scott Monument, she was almost run into by a figure from which long scarves and picturesque mulberry-coloured draperies fluttered in the east wind. It was Mildred Lovatt.

“You here, my dear girl!” cried the little woman. “But why were you not with us? We have just given Louis Pender such a send-off! You knew his panels were being unveiled to-day at the new Nicholson Hall? – The Seasons – to my mind he’s never done anything better. But I needn’t tell you I was not the only one to recognize the face and figure of Spring! After the unveiling we gave him a luncheon party; and as he had to go by the two o’clock train, we all went and saw him off. He had a frightful cold, poor man, but I think we succeeded in cheering him up a little. You should have been with us, Joanna. Fancy your being in Edinburgh …”

Somehow Joanna excused herself and made her escape. Louis was gone. It was all over. No more hope. Though it had been by her own doing that she had not seen him again, she did not deceive herself on that account. If he had wanted to see her from any other motive than remorseful kindness, he would have waited longer. He must have remembered that he had mentioned four as the hour he would be free. Yet he had left no further message at the hotel. He had brought her to Edinburgh and had left her there alone. He had been glad, no doubt, to escape so easily.

That she could do anything else now than return to her hotel for the night never occurred to her. Louis was gone. But for herself as yet trains to London had no existence. The last grain of her initiative was gone. Immediate shelter was all she could think of.

Hour after hour passed till night came. Still she had not swallowed a morsel of food: and as she lay, once more sleepless, on a strange bed, with a labouring heart, and lungs unable to compass the top of a breath for all their continual, deep sighing, she was again beset by that sudden fear for her body.

It was full of strange pains. Suppose it were to take ill here in the hotel? Suppose it were to die? Two o’clock struck from a church outside … three o’clock … four o’clock. She lacked the courage to rouse strangers at this hour. Yet she felt so ill – so sinking all at once – that by the usual waking time she was sure she would be lastingly stricken. Without some outside help, she would be very ill, or mad, or dead by dawn. Her flesh would not hold out so long.