“Yes.”

She rang the bell.

“Tell Kate where to send my things,” she said as she left the room.  Her mind took possession of her, so that she did not waste a word of her lips, or a single motion of her feet.  She came back in five minutes, ready to start.

“What is it?” she said as they drove to the station.

“Haemorrhage of the brain.”

“The brain?”

“Apoplexy.”

“Is he unconscious?”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes.

“He will not know me,” she said.

Hannay was silent.  She lay back and kept her eyes closed.

A van blocked the narrow street that led to the East Station.  The driver reined in his horse.  She opened her eyes in terror.

“We shall miss the train—­if we stop.”

“No, no, we’ve plenty of time.”

They waited.

“Oh, tell him to drive round the other way.”

“We shall miss the train if we do that.”

“Well, make that man in front move on.  Make him turn—­up there.”

The van turned into a side street, and they drove on.

The Scarby train was drawn up along the platform.  They had five minutes before it started; but she hurried into the nearest compartment.  They had it to themselves.

The train moved on.  It was a two hours’ journey to Scarby.

A strong wind blew through the open window and she shivered.  She had brought no warm wrap with her.  Hannay laid his overcoat over her knees and about her body.  His large hands moved gently, wrapping it close.  She thanked him and tried to smile.  And when he saw her smile, Hannay was sorry for the things he had thought and said of her.  His voice when he spoke to her vibrated tenderly.  She resigned herself to his hands.  Grief made her passive now.

Hannay sank back in the far corner and left her to her grief.  He covered his eyes with his hands that he might not see her.  Poor Hannay hoped that, if he removed his painful presence, she would allow herself the relief of tears.

But no tears fell from under her closed eyelids.  Her soul was withdrawn behind them into the darkness where the body’s pang ceased, and there was help.  She started when the train stopped at Scarby Station.

As they stopped at the hotel there came upon her that reminiscence which is foreknowledge and the sense of destiny.

A woman was coming down the staircase as they entered.  She did not see her at first.  She would not have seen her at all if Hannay had not taken her arm and drawn her aside into the shelter of a doorway.  Then, as the woman passed out, she saw that it was Lady Cayley.

She looked helplessly at Hannay.  Her eyes said, “Where is he?” She wondered where, in what room, she should find her husband.

She found him upstairs in the room that had been their bridal chamber.  He lay on their bridal bed, motionless and senseless.  There was a deep flush on one side of his face, one corner of his mouth was slightly drawn, and one eyelid drooped.  He was paralysed down his left side.