‘Yes, afterwards,’ she said. She wanted him to go, and he saw it and went, and Sprats sat down to think. But for the first time in her life she found it impossible to think clearly. She tried to marshal facts and to place them before her in due sequence and proper order, but she discovered that she was pretty much like all other women at these junctures and that a strange confusion had taken possession of her. For the moment there was too much of Saxonstowe in her mental atmosphere to enable her to think, and after some time she uttered an impatient exclamation and went off to attend to her duties. For the remainder of the afternoon she bustled about the house, and the nursing-staff wondered what it was that had given their Head such a fit of vigorous research into unexplored corners. It was not until evening that she allowed herself to be alone again, and by that time she was prepared to sit down and face the situation. She went to her own room with a resolute determination to think of everything calmly and coolly, and there she found evening newspapers lying on the table, and she picked one up mechanically and opened it without the intention of reading it, and ere she knew what was happening she had read of the tragedy in Paris. The news stamped itself upon her at first without causing her smart or pain, even as a clean shot passes through the flesh with little tearing of the fibres. She sat down and read all that the telegrams had to tell, and searched each of the newspapers until she was in possession of the latest news. She had gone into her room with the influence of Saxonstowe’s love-making still heavy upon her womanhood; she left it an unsexed thing of action and forceful determination. In a few moments she had seen her senior nurse and had given her certain orders; in a few more she was in her outdoor cloak and bonnet and at the door, and a maid was whistling for a hansom for her. But just as she was running down the steps to enter it, another came hurriedly into the square, and Saxonstowe waved his hand to her. She paused and went back to the open door; he jumped from his cab and joined her, and they went into the house together, and into the room which she had just left. ‘I was going to you’ she said, ‘and yet I might have known that you would come to me.’ ‘I came as soon as I knew,’ he answered. She looked at him narrowly: he was watching her with inquiring eyes. ‘We must go there at once,’ she said. ‘There is time to catch the night train?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘plenty of time. I have already made some arrangements--I thought you would wish it.’ She nodded in answer to this, and began to take some things out of a desk. Saxonstowe noticed that her hand was perfectly steady, though her face was very pale. She turned presently from packing a small handbag and came up to him. ‘Listen,’ she said; ‘it is you and I who are going--you understand?’