The train rattled on through the night.  Anxiety came, wraith-like at first, drifting into her busy brain.  She had hardly had time to be anxious in the rush of preparation and departure.  But restlessness paved the way.  She began to ask herself with growing uneasiness what could be awaiting her at the end of the journey.  The summons had been so clear and imperative.  Her first thought, her instinct, had been to obey.  Till the enforced inaction of this train journey she had not had time to feel the gnawing torture of suspense.  But now it came and racked her.  The thought of Tommy and his need became paramount.  Did he know that she was hastening to him, she wondered?  Or had he—­had he already passed beyond her reach?  Men passed so quickly in this tropical wilderness.  The solemn music of an anthem she had known and loved in the old far-off days of her girlhood rose and surged through her.  She found herself repeating the words: 

    “Our life is but a shadow;
      So soon passeth it away,
    And we are gone,—­
      So soon,—­so soon.”

The repetition of those last words rang like a knell.  But Tommy!  She could not think of Tommy’s eager young life passing so.  Those words were written for the old and weary.  But for such as Tommy—­a thousand times No!  He was surely too ardent, too full of life, to pass so.  She felt as if he were years younger than herself.

And then another thought came to her, a curious haunting thought.  Was the Nemesis that had overtaken her in the forbidden paradise yet pursuing her with relentless persistence?  Was the measure of her punishment not yet complete?  Did some further vengeance still follow her in the wilderness of her desolation?  She tried to fling the thought from her, but it clung like an evil dream.  She could not wholly shake off the impression that it had made upon her.

Slowly the night wore away.  The heat was intense.  She felt as if she were sitting in a tank of steaming vapour.  The oppression of the atmosphere was like a physical weight.  And ever the rain beat down, rattling, incessant, upon the tin roof above her head.  She thought of Nemesis again, Nemesis wielding an iron flail that never missed its mark.  There was something terrible to her in this perpetual beating of rain.  She had never imagined anything like it.

It was in the dark of the early morning that she began at last to near her destination.  A ten-mile drive through the jungle awaited her, she knew.  She wondered if Monck had made provision for this or if all arrangements would be left in Peter’s capable hands.  She had never felt more thankful for this trusty servant of hers than now with the loneliness and darkness of this unfamiliar world hedging her round.  She felt almost as one in a hostile country, and even the thought of Tommy and his need could not dispel the impression.

The train rattled into the little iron-built station of Khanmulla.  The rainfall seemed to increase as they stopped.  It was like the beating of rods upon the station-roof.  There came the usual hubbub of discordant cries, but in foreign voices and in a foreign tongue.