Before he went to sleep that night he resolved that at their next meeting he would lead the conversation to a frank discussion of their relations and "have it out with her." But when he called at Carteret Street two days later, he found it quite impossible to do any such thing. She was light-hearted and gay, and evidently looked forward to the change of life with pleasure. She named the day of departure, and mentioned that she had arranged to take Lottie with her. She consulted him about a compromise, already effected, with her landlord as to the remainder of the tenancy, and said she had sold the furniture as it stood, for a very small sum, to a dealer. It hurt him to think that she had given him no opportunity of actively assisting her in the hundred little matters of business involved in a change of hemisphere. What had become of her feminine reliance upon him? He felt as if some object was rapidly approaching to collide with and crush him, and he was powerless to hinder it. Three days, two days, one day more! CHAPTER XXV The special train for Southampton, drawn up against the main-line platform at Waterloo, seemed to have resigned itself with an almost animal passivity to the onslaught of the crowd of well-dressed men and women who were boarding it. From the engine a thin column of steam rose lazily to the angular roof, where a few sparrows fluttered with sudden swoops and short flights. The engine-driver leaned against the side of the cab, stroking his beard; the stoker was trimming coal on the tender. Those two knew the spectacle by heart: the scattered piles of steamer trunks amidst which passengers hurried hither and thither with no apparent object; the continual purposeless opening and shutting of carriage doors; the deferential gestures of the glittering guard as he bent an ear to ladies whose footmen stood respectfully behind them; the swift movements of the bookstall clerk selling papers, and the meditative look of the bookstall manager as he swept his hand along the shelf of new novels and selected a volume which he could thoroughly recommend to the customer in the fur coat; the long colloquies between husbands and wives, sons and mothers, daughters and fathers, fathers and sons, lovers and lovers, punctuated sometimes by the fluttering of a handkerchief, or the placing of a hand on a shoulder; the unconcealed agitation of most and the carefully studied calm of a few; the grimaces of porters when passengers had turned away; the slow absorption by _their_ train of all the luggage and nearly all the people; the creeping of the clock towards the hour; the kisses; the tears; the lowering of the signal,--to them it was no more than a common street-scene.