The rest of the journey was passed almost in silence. They had the compartment to themselves for the greater part of the time, and they sat in opposite corners, pretending to read--Isola apparently absorbed in a book that she had taken up at random just before she started, when the carriage was at the door, and while Allegra was calling to her to make haste. It was Carlyle’s “Hero Worship.” The big words, the magnificent sentences, passed before her eyes like lines in an unknown language. She had not the faintest idea what she was reading; but she followed the lines and turned the leaf at the bottom of a page mechanically. Martin Disney applied himself to the newspapers which he had accumulated on the way--some at Par, some at Plymouth, some at Exeter, till the compartment was littered all over with them. He turned and tossed them about one after the other. Never had they seemed so empty--the leaders such mere beating the air; the hard facts so few and insignificant. He glanced at Isola as she sat in her corner, motionless and composed. He watched the slender, white hands turning the leaves of her book at regular intervals. “Is your book very interesting?” he asked, at last, exasperated by her calmness. He had been attentive and polite to her, offering her the papers, ordering tea for her at Exeter, doing all that a courteous husband ought to do; but he had made no attempt at conversation--nor had she. This question about the book was wrung from him by the intensity of his irritation. “It is a book you gave me years ago at Dinan,” she answered, looking at him piteously. “‘Hero Worship.’ Don’t you remember? I had never read anything of Carlyle’s before then. You taught me to like him.” “Did I? Yes, I remember--a little Tauchnitz volume bound in morocco--contraband in England. A cheat--like many things in this life.” He turned his face resolutely to the window, as if to end the conversation, and he did not speak again till they were moving slowly into the great station, in the azure brightness of the electric light. “I have telegraphed for rooms at Whitley’s,” he said, naming a small private hotel near Cavendish Square, where they had stayed for a few days before he started for the East. “Do you think it would be too late for us to call at Hans Place before we go to our hotel?” She started at the question. He saw her cheeks crimson in the lamplight. “I don’t think the lateness of hour will matter,” she said, “unless Gwendolen is dining out. She dines out very often.” “I hope to-night may be an exception.” “Do you want very much to see her?” asked Isola. “Very much.” “You are going to question her about me, I suppose?” “Yes, Isola, that is what I am going to do.” “It is treating me rather like a criminal; or, at any rate, like a person whose word cannot be believed.”