She bows her head in profound humiliation, accepting that stinging chastisement as so much less than her due; while at the same moment a contradictory flash of repulsion from him for being able at such a moment to see the æsthetic side of the situation whizzes through her consciousness. Between them they have slain all talk that can be possible at such a moment. Incapable of thought, her brain a caldron of boiling miseries, Lavinia sets one foot before the other, plodding blindly on; while Rupert--she has never possessed the plate-glass window into his soul, which he has always had into hers, so that what memories, projects, torments, occupy his mind during that last half-hour she never knows. The sound of a church clock rouses both--her from amid her steam of boiling vapours; him from his unread thoughts. They have reached a part of the road where the railway runs parallel to it, and a gate, faced by another on the opposite side, gives entrance to the line. They pause to listen and count, impatient of the interval between the deliberate strokes. “_Seven!_ Surely it can’t be seven! He will put himself into a fever if we are late.” Man and girl look at each other in shocked surprise, their own calamities for the moment entirely sponged off their memories. “And--is it possible?” throwing an astonished glance of apprehension around--“we are close to Rivers Sutton! It will take us quite an hour to get home.” “Not if we run along the line!” The shot-out suggestion is Lavinia’s. “The line!” Rupert echoes doubtfully. “Yes, the line!” she repeats in a passion of irritation at his hesitancy. “Are you afraid of being run over, or of the penalty of forty shillings?” The gate is locked, but they are on its other side in a minute, and racing along the grass edge that borders the metals. For the time every idea is abolished from both their minds, but that of reaching home with the least possible delay. In a perfect unanimity of distressful haste they speed along, scarcely spending words for fear of wasting breath after the first outburst of remorseful ejaculations. “How could we have forgotten him?” “The specialist told me that the least friction or worry was above all things to be avoided.” They run along for a while in perfect silence, their long legs skimming over the abounding spring flowers that always seem to relish the railway bank. Then Lavinia cries out, “What time is it now?” Without a break in his run, Rupert pulls out his watch, looks at it, holds it to his ear, and answers in a key of acute annoyance-- “It has stopped!” “And Rivers Sutton Church clock does not strike the quarters?” “No.” “It can’t be more than ten minutes past,” she rejoins, panting a little, though not much, for she is a muscular modern girl, and in good condition; “for I hear the 7.10: it has just left Rivers Sutton station.” “It is always late.”