They were out of the town, they were clear of the houses, and he had not looked, he had not been able to look at her. Her weakness, her inconstancy deserved their punishment: but for all her fortune, to recover all that he had lost and she had gained, he would not have looked at her there. Yet, while the coach changed horses in the Square before the Bear, he had had a glimpse of her—reflected in the window of a shop; and he had marked with greedy eyes each line of her figure and seen that she had wound a veil round her face and hat, so that, whatever her emotions, she might defy curious eyes. And yet, as far as he was concerned, she had done it in vain. The veil could not hide the agitation, could not hide the strained rigidity of her pose, or the convulsive force with which one hand gripped the other in her lap. Well, that was over, thank God! For he had as soon seen a woman beaten. The town was behind them; Newbury was not far in front. And now with shame he began to savour a weak pleasure in her presence, in her nearness to him, in the thought that her eyes were on him and her thoughts full of him, and that if he stretched out his hand he could touch her; that there was that between them, that there must always be that between them, which time could not destroy. The coach was loaded, but for him it carried her only: and for Mary he was sure that he filled the landscape were it as wide as that which, west of Newbury, reveals to the admiring traveller the whole wide vale of the Kennet. He thrilled at the thought; and the coachman asked him if he were cold. But he was far from cold; he knew that she too trembled, she, too, thrilled. And a foolish exultation possessed him. He had hungry thoughts of her nearness, and her beauty; and insane plans of snatching her to his breast when she left the coach, and covering her with kisses though a hundred looked on. He might suffer for it, he would deserve to suffer for it, it would be an intolerable outrage. But he would have kissed her, he would have held her to his heart. Nothing could undo that. Yet it was only in fancy that he was reckless, for still he did not dare to look at her. And when they came at last to Marlborough, and drew up at the door of the Castle Inn, where west-bound travellers dined, he descended hurriedly and went into the coffee-room to secure a place in a corner, whence he might see her enter without meeting her eyes.