“Not at all,” I answered drily.  “His Grace is President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or Children, whichever you like.  We have a large correspondence.”

She picked up her book.

“I am afraid that I understand you,” she said.  “You have a good deal of the brutality of youth, Guy, and, I might add, of its credulity also.  Whose word is it, I wonder, that you have taken so abjectly—­with such an open mouth?  If I have enemies I have not deserved them.  But, after all, it matters little.”

We did not speak again until we neared the junction.  Then she began to gather up her things.

“How are you getting home?” she asked.  “It is two o’clock, and raining.”

“I am going to walk,” I answered.

“But that is absurd,” she protested.  “I have a closed carriage here.  I insist that you let me drive you.  It is only common humanity; and you have that great box too.”

I buttoned up my coat.

“Mrs. Smith-Lessing,” I said, “you perhaps wish to force me into seeming ungracious.  You have even called me brutal.  It is your own fault.  You give me no chance of escape.  You even force me now to tell you that I do not desire—­that I will not accept—­any hospitality at your hands.”

She fastened her jacket with trembling fingers.  Her face she kept averted from me.

“Very well,” she said softly, “I shall not trouble you any more.”

At the junction I fetched the sleepy-looking porter to see to her luggage, and then left her.  My rug I left in the station-master’s office, and with the dispatch-box in my hand I climbed the steps from the station, and turned into the long straight road which led to Braster.  I had barely gone a hundred yards when a small motor brougham, with blazing lights and insistent horn, came flying past me and on into the darkness.  I caught a momentary glimpse of Mrs. Smith-Lessing’s pale face as the car flashed by, a weird little silhouette, come and gone in a second.  Away ahead I saw the mud and rain from the pools fly up into the air in a constant stream caught in the broad white glare of the brilliant search-lamps.  Then the car turned a corner and vanished.

I was tired, yet I found the change from the close railway carriage, and the tension of the last few hours, delightful.  The road along which I trudged ran straight to the sea, the distant roar of which was already in my ears, and the wet wind which blew in my face was salt and refreshing.  It was a little after two in the morning, and the darkness would have been absolute, but for a watery moon, which every now and then gave a fitful light.  For a mile or more I walked with steady, unflagging footsteps.  Then suddenly I found myself slackening my pace.  I walked slower and slower.  At last I stopped.