"Good bye, Jack. Oh God, my heart is broken!" "I tell you----" He turned around. He was alone. CHAPTER XIX. MRS. HANBURY. John Hanbury had reached the end of the street before he knew where he was. He had no memory of how he got out of the house. No doubt he had behaved like a madman, and he had been temporarily insane. He must have snatched his hat in the hall, but he was without his overcoat. His heart was beating violently, and his head was burning hot. He must have run down the street. There was no one in view. He had only a whirling and flashing memory of the last few minutes with Dora. His temper had completely mastered him, and he must have spoken and behaved like a maniac. He must have behaved like a maniac in her presence--to her! Now and then, in the heat of public speaking, he had been carried beyond himself, beyond the power of memory afterwards, but never in his life had impetuosity betrayed him in private life until now. What sort of a lunatic must he have been to sin for the first time before the only woman he ever cared for? The woman he had asked to be his wife? The excitement of the day had been too much for him, and he had broken down in the end. He had taken only one glass of wine at dinner, and only coffee after. Something must have gone wrong with his brain. Could it be this fainting which had overtaken him to-day, and twice before, indicated some flaw or weakness in the brain? It would have been better he had died in that accursed slum than come back to consciousness and done this. Then he had fainted like a woman, and behaved like a coward. Now he had acted like a cad! He had abused, reviled the woman he professed to love, and who he knew loved him! He dared say he had not struck her! It was, perhaps, a pity he had not struck her, for if he had he should be either now in the hands of the police, or shot by her father! It was a good job the girl had a father to shoot him. If he was called out he should fire in the air, and if Ashton demanded another shot and missed him, he should reserve his fire and blow his own brains out. When a man did a thing like this, there was only one reflection that could ease his intolerable agony of reproach--he could blow out his brains and rid the world of a cowardly cad. From the moment he found himself at the end of Curzon Street until he reached his mother's house in Chester Square, he walked rapidly, mechanically, and without design. When he saw the door before him he was staggered for a moment. "How did I come here?" he asked himself, as he opened it with a latch-key. He could not answer the question. He saw in a dim way that it would be interesting to imagine how a man in possession of his faculties walked a whole mile without knowing why he walked or remembering anything by the way. But at present--Pooh! pooh!