She was well known at the station, so it seemed improbable she could have been there unobserved.

There was another station up the line six miles distant.  She might easily have walked to that to avoid notice.

I took a fly, and drove to the other station, but here Viola was not known personally, and though I described her, and was assured she had not been seen there, it was indefinite and uncertain information that settled nothing.

She might have gone from there to town by an early train unnoticed, or she might have gone down the line to another country place to elude me.  I could tell nothing.

Feeling sick and dispirited, I drove back to the station and then walked on to the house.

When I went upstairs the room was in disorder just as I had left it.  As I entered the bed caught my eye, the pillow her head had so lately crushed, and there beside it the delicate garment she had been wearing a few hours ago.

An immense, a devastating sense of loss came over me.  A feeling of suffering so intense and so vast, it seemed to crush me beneath it physically as well as mentally.

I sank down in the armchair, laid my head back and closed my eyes.  I ceased to think any more, I was unconscious of anything except that sense of intense suffering.

By that evening I had everything packed, all the bills paid; and I took the seven-o’clock train to town.  I felt to stay there the night, to attempt to sleep in that room so full of memories of her was an impossibility.  Something that would drive me mad if I attempted it.

The people of the house stared at me when I paid them, and the maids looked frightened when I addressed them, but I hardly saw them, doing what was necessary in a mechanical way, with all my senses turned inward, as it were, and blunted by that one overpowering idea of loss.

The two hours in a fast train did me good.  I had a sort of subconscious feeling I was going to her by going to town which buoyed me up instinctively; but the reaction was terrible when I actually arrived and drove to some rooms I knew in Jermyn Street and realised that I was indeed alone.

I sat up all that night, feeling my brain alight and blazing with a fire of agony and pain.  Sleep was out of the question.  A man does not love a woman as I loved Viola and sleep the night after she has left him.

The next morning I went to her bankers, only to get just the answers I had expected.

Yes, Mrs. Lonsdale had communicated with them.  She was abroad, and they had her address but were not at liberty to disclose it.  They would forward all letters to her immediately.

I went straight back to my rooms and wrote to her.  I poured out my whole heart in the letter, imploring her to come to me; yet every line I wrote I knew was useless, useless.

Still I could not rest nor exist till I had written it, and when it was posted I felt a certain solace.