“No one—­” began Sir Richmond, startled.

“But I don’t mind very much.  It’s how things are.  If I were a perfectly civilized woman I shouldn’t mind at all.  If men and women are not to be tied to each other there must needs be such things as this.”

“But you,” said Sir Richmond.  “I at any rate am not like that.  I cannot bear the thought that you—­”

“You need not bear it, my dear.  I was just trying to imagine this world that is to be.  Women I think are different from men in their jealousy.  Men are jealous of the other man; women are jealous for their man—­and careless about the other woman.  What I love in you I am sure about.  My mind was empty when it came to you and now it is full to overflowing.  I shall feel you moving about in the same world with me.  I’m not likely to think of anyone else for a very long time....  Later on, who knows?  I may marry.  I make no vows.  But I think until I know certainly that you do not want me any more it will be impossible for me to marry or to have a lover.  I don’t know, but that is how I believe it will be with me.  And my mind feels beautifully clear now and settled.  I’ve got your idea and made it my own, your idea that we matter scarcely at all, but that the work we do matters supremely.  I’ll find my rope and tug it, never fear.  Half way round the world perhaps some day you will feel me tugging.”

“I shall feel you’re there,” he said, “whether you tug or not....”

“Three miles left to Exeter,” he reported presently.

She glanced back at Belinda.

“It is good that we have loved, my dear,” she whispered.  “Say it is good.”

“The best thing in all my life,” he said, and lowered his head and voice to say:  “My dearest dear.”

“Heart’s desire—­still—?”

“Heart’s delight....  Priestess of life....  Divinity.”

She smiled and nodded and suddenly Belinda, up above their lowered heads, accidentally and irrelevantly, no doubt, coughed.

At Exeter Station there was not very much time to spare after all.  Hardly had Sir Richmond secured a luncheon basket for the two travellers before the train came into the station.  He parted from Miss Grammont with a hand clasp.  Belinda was flushed and distressed at the last but her friend was quiet and still.  “Au revoir,” said Belinda without conviction when Sir Richmond shook her hand.

Section 8.

Sir Richmond stood quite still on the platform as the train ran out of the station.  He did not move until it had disappeared round the bend.  Then he turned, lost in a brown study, and walked very slowly towards the station exit.

“The most wonderful thing in my life,” he thought.  “And already—­it is unreal.

“She will go on to her father whom she knows ten thousand times more thoroughly than she knows me; she will go on to Paris, she will pick up all the threads of her old story, be reminded of endless things in her life, but never except in the most casual way of these days:  they will be cut off from everything else that will serve to keep them real; and as for me—­this connects with nothing else in my life at all....  It is as disconnected as a dream....  Already it is hardly more substantial than a dream....