“When does monsieur return to England?” she said only. Ned clasped his hands behind his head and stretched vigorously. “Very soon, I think. Mademoiselle Théroigne, I am tired of you all. Very soon, I think.” She made as if she would have touched him again; but he gently put her away from him. At that she looked up in his eyes very forlorn and pleading. “Mademoiselle Théroigne,” said he, “I do not know or ask you your story. Here, since I left, all flowers seem to have run to a seed that is best not scattered abroad. I cannot, of course, prevent your going to London if you choose. Only, for myself, I must tell you, that myself is at present as much as I can undertake to direct and govern. Besides, it is not at all likely that you would find _him_ there.” In an instant she was again all scorn and passion. Her lip lifted and showed her teeth. She humped her shoulders; her hands clinched in front of her. “Not to understand,” she cried, “that that is my very reason for desiring the refuge of your barbarous land! To escape from myself and the murder in me!” “But why leave Méricourt at all?” The blight of her fury was as sudden as the blast that springs from a glacier. “May _you_ know what it is to roll in a trough of spikes and find no release in your agony! Cold, passionless, insolent! Lazarus, to refuse to dip your finger in water! But I will go in spite of you: I will go, monsieur, and laugh and snap my fingers in your face!” “Permit me to say,” said Ned coolly, “that this is a very foolish and unnecessary exhibition of temper.” But she flounced round her shoulder and ran from him, storming and crying out, and disappeared down the track leading to her home. And, as for him--he went on to the “Landlust.” CHAPTER XV. During the course of his short journey from the wood-skirt to the inhospitable hostelry of his former acquaintance, Ned could have thought himself conscious of an atmosphere vaguely unfamiliar to his recollections of Méricourt. These were not at fault, he felt convinced, because of climatic changes; because of an aspect of seasonable reinvigoration in a place that he had last seen sunk in lethargy; because of an increase in the number of people he saw moving in the street even. They recognised themselves astray, rather, over a spirit of demure gravity--a chosen tribe smugness of expression, so to speak--that seemed to inform with pharisaic _minauderie_ the faces of many of those he passed by; and even he fancied he could distinguish--in the absence of this self-important mien--strangers (of whom there were not a few) from those that were native to the hamlet.