At last the train came in.  There was a great rattling of milk-cans on the gloomy platform, and various slouching shapes entered third-class carriages.  The wanderers had the only first-class compartment to themselves.  It struck cold and noisome, like a peculiarly unaired charnel-house.  A feeble lamp, whose effect was dimmed by the swishing dirty oil in the bottom of the globe, gave a pretense at illumination.  The guard passing by the window turned his lantern on them and paused for a wondering moment.  Were they a runaway couple?  If so, thought he, they had arrived at quick repentance.  As they looked too dismal for tips, he concerned himself with them no more.  The train started.  Emmy shook with cold, in spite of her fur-lined jacket.  Septimus took off his overcoat and spread it over their two bodies as they huddled together for warmth.  After a while her head drooped on his shoulder and she slept, while Septimus sucked his empty pipe, not daring to light it lest he should disturb her slumbers.  For the same reason he forbore to change his original awkward attitude, and in consequence suffered agonies of pins and needles.  To have a solid young woman asleep in your arms is not the romantic pleasure the poets make out; for comfort, she might just as well stand on your head.  Also, as Emmy unconsciously drew the overcoat away from him, one side of his body perished with cold; and a dinner suit is not warm enough for traveling on a frosty morning.

The thought of his dinner jacket reminded him of his puzzledom.  What were Emmy and himself doing in that galley of a railway carriage when they might have been so much more comfortable in their own beds in Nunsmere?  It was an impenetrable mystery to which the sleeping girl who was causing him such acute though cheerfully borne discomfort alone had the key.  In vain did he propound to himself the theory that such speculation betokened an indelicate mind; in vain did he ask himself with unwonted severity what business it was of his; in vain did he try to hitch his thoughts to Patent Safety Railway Carriages, which were giving him a great deal of trouble; in vain did he try to sleep.  The question haunted him.  So much so that when Emmy awoke and rubbed her eyes, and in some confusion apologized for the use to which she had put his shoulder, he was almost ashamed to look her in the face.

“What are you going to do when you get to Victoria?” Emmy asked.

Septimus had not thought of it.  “Go back to Nunsmere, I suppose, by the next train—­unless you want me?”

“No, I don’t want you,” said Emmy absently.  “Why should I?”

And she gazed stonily at the suburban murk of the great city until they reached Victoria.  There, a dejected four-wheeled cab with a drooping horse stood solitary on the rank—­a depressing object.  Emmy shivered at the sight.

“I can’t stand it.  Drive me to my door.  I know I’m a beast, Septimus dear, but I am grateful.  I am, really.”