An ordinary girl would have assuredly shed tears over such a packing, but Teresa was not given to tears; moreover, in another hour she would be starting on a _tete-a-tete_ journey with Dane, and a disfigured face would not help her cause. She recognised the fact, and set her lips, refusing to give way to the choky sensation in her throat, to the pricking at the back of her eyes. Tears were for those who had lost hope, and she had not yet come to that pass. If much was lost, a great deal remained. She would go on fighting. Downstairs Teresa made her adieux with smiling composure. It was Grizel who cried, crumpling her tiny handkerchief into a ball, and dabbing at her eyes without an effort at concealment. The curse of a vivid imagination was presenting to her the inner tragedy of the journey ahead, when the two who were supposedly lovers were left alone together for leaden hours which should have been winged with joy. She envisaged the home-coming too, the flood of maternal questionings, the blankness of spirit which would descend upon the girl when she attempted to settle down. While Teresa had been packing her trunk Grizel had been with her in spirit, feeling the reflex of every pang, and now as the carriage drove from the door she cried unrestrainedly, to her husband's mingled bewilderment and concern. "Are you sorry they are gone? You said you would have no time..." "I haven't. I'm glad; but, oh, Martin, I _am_ Teresa at this moment, and it hurts! I know exactly how she suffers..." "That's impossible. Teresa could never feel in your way, and besides, dearest, why should she suffer? She's not such a baby as to grouse over a few days' visit. Especially when she has her man." Martin knew nothing of the awkwardness of the position, and Grizel realised that she must appear hysterical in his eyes, and longed to pour out the whole tale, but it would not do; for everyone's sake it would not do. There might come a time when his unconsciousness would be the greatest boon to all concerned. "It's all the fault of my beastly imagination!" she sniffed ruefully. "I'm always living through other people's dramas, and tearing my heart to fiddle-strings imagining how I should agonise and despair if I were in the same place. You said one day that it was easy to be philosophical about a neighbour's toothache, but it isn't easy to me. I feel the horrid thing leaping inside my own mouth, and stabbing up to my own ear, and taste the nasty chlorodyney cotton-wool in my own mouth. I'm such a sensitive little thing!" "You're a little goose," Martin said, laughing. "In nine cases out of ten, while you have been torturing yourself, the toothache has stopped, or the poor martyr has shaken off his troubles, and gone off to play golf. We can't carry other people's burdens for them, darling, they've got to struggle through by themselves. It's curious with your happy temperament, that you should have such a lurid imagination."