There was a train starting to Windsor in ten minutes; so they went by it, and strolled down by the river and lingered near the boats, and went into the town and looked at the shops and the outside of the castle. Then they lunched at the confectioner’s, an extravagant lunch which Walter ordered, and afterwards, while they were still drowsy and happy, they hired an open fly and drove to Virginia Water. They hurried back to Windsor in time to catch the 6 p.m. train for town by half a minute, and congratulated themselves upon finding an empty carriage. “I shall always remember this dear day,” Florence said, as they sat over their last little dinner at home. “That’s a good thing,” Walter said, “and so will I, dear wife. When I come back we’ll have another like it in memory of this one’s success.” Then he remembered Alfred Wimple. “I should like to know who that girl was,” he thought; “wonder if she’s the daughter of another tailor he doesn’t want to pay, and if I met him to-morrow I wonder what lie he would tell me about her—he always lied, poor beggar.” And this shows that his thoughts were sometimes not as charitable as his words. The next day very early Walter departed for Southampton. Florence went to see him safely on board. “We shall have the good little journey together,” he said dismally, for he was loth enough to leave her now that the parting time had come. But it seemed as if the train flew along the rails in its hurry to get near the sea, and the journey was over directly. There was all the bustle of getting on board; and almost before she knew it, Florence was on her way back to London alone. As if in a dream she walked home from the station, thinking of her husband watching the sea as it widened between him and England. She was glad she had seen the ship, she could imagine him seated at the long table in the saloon, with the punkahs—useless enough at present—waving overhead, or in his cabin, looking out through the porthole at the white crests to the waves. Yes. She could see all his surroundings plainly. She gave a long sigh. She was a brave little woman, and had tried so hard not to break down before Walter, though in the last moment on board, when she had felt as if her heart would break, she had not been able altogether to help it. And now, as she walked home in the dusk without him, she felt as if she could not live through the long months of separation. “But I will—I will,” she said to herself while the tears trickled down her face; “only it _is_ hard, for there is no one in the world like him, no one—no one; and we have never been parted before.”