“Why should I?”

“Do you know who she is?  Have you a warrant against her?”

“No.”

“Then shut up.”

“But—­”

“One word more, Alexandre, and I’ll set you down beside the road.  Then you can make as many arrests as you please.”

Mazeroux did not breathe another word.  For that matter the speed at which they at once began to go hardly left him time to raise a protest.  Not a little anxious, he thought only of watching the horizon and keeping a lookout for obstacles.

The trees vanished on either side almost unseen.  Their foliage overhead made a rhythmical sound as of moaning waves.  Night insects dashed themselves to death against the lamps.

“We shall get there right enough,” Mazeroux ventured to observe.  “There’s no need to put on the pace.”

The speed increased and he said no more.

Villages, plains, hills; and then, suddenly in the midst of the darkness, the lights of a large town, Le Mans.

“Do you know the way to the station, Alexandre?”

“Yes, Chief, to the right and then straight on.”

Of course they ought to have gone to the left.  They wasted seven or eight minutes in wandering through the streets and receiving contradictory instructions.  When the motor pulled up at the station the train was whistling.

Don Luis jumped out, rushed through the waiting-room, found the doors shut, jostled the railway officials who tried to stop him, and reached the platform.

A train was about to start on the farther line.  The last door was banged to.  He ran along the carriages, holding on to the brass rails.

“Your ticket, sir!  Where’s your ticket?” shouted an angry collector.

Don Luis continued to fly along the footboards, giving a swift glance through the panes, thrusting aside the persons whose presence at the windows prevented him from seeing, prepared at any moment to burst into the compartment containing the two accomplices.

He did not see them in the end carriages.  The train started.  And suddenly he gave a shout:  they were there, the two of them, by themselves!  He had seen them!  They were there:  Florence, lying on the seat, with her head on Sauverand’s shoulder, and he, leaning over her, with his arms around her!

Mad with rage he flung back the bottom latch and seized the handle of the carriage door.  At the same moment he lost his balance and was pulled off by the furious ticket collector and by Mazeroux, who bellowed: 

“Why, you’re mad, Chief! you’ll kill yourself!”

“Let go, you ass!” roared Don Luis.  “It’s they!  Let me be, can’t you!”

The carriages filed past.  He tried to jump on to another footboard.  But the two men were clinging to him, some railway porters came to their assistance, the station-master ran up.  The train moved out of the station.

“Idiots!” he shouted.  “Boobies!  Pack of asses that you are, couldn’t you leave me alone?  Oh, I swear to Heaven—!”