“I would leave you alone if you were happy,” burst out Gerard. “It is because I see you are miserable and harassed, because I hear you imploring to be let off doing that which you have been ordered to do, that I beg you to leave this career, and its rewards, and the rest of it, at any rate for a time. If you would only leave London for a while, go away somewhere and rest and forget this work and all its troubles, I would be content. But until you do, until I know that you are taking the rest and holiday you need, I shall continue what you call my persecution, in the hope of being near you at the moment--which is sure to come--when you will want a friend to stand by you, a better one than those for whom you are working now.” He was conscious that he was weak in argument, and that his lame words would have but little effect against the resolve which set her mouth firm and shone in her mournful eyes. What he had not been prepared for, however, was the gentleness with which she received this tirade, as she stood up in the compartment and prepared to get out at the next station. “You are only adding to my difficulties,” she said, in a tone of mournful resignation. “I quite appreciate the kindness of your motives, but your actions worry and harass me. In gratitude for your good intentions I say ‘Thank you.’ But in self-defense, as you are with the best will in the world doing me a decided injury, I must say also: I wish to Heaven I had never met you, and that I may, now that I have had the misfortune to meet you, never meet you again.” She ended with a sort of stifled sob. The cruel words stabbed Gerard to the heart. He uttered an incoherent protest, but she would not listen. Going quickly to the end of the compartment, she remained standing, with her back turned towards him and without uttering another word, until the train stopped at the next station, when she hurriedly got out, ran up the steps, and jumped into a hansom, leaving him, remorseful, uneasy, and miserable, on the platform. He had jumped out after her, but saw that it was ridiculous to think of further pursuit. But a glance at the moving train as it went out of the station showed him, in one of the compartments, the face of the white-haired gentleman, with a faint smile on his cold features. And Gerard, who saw that the mysterious stranger was looking at him, with a sort of faint, cold contempt upon his face, wondered vaguely whether he had not seen those well-cut features, and that inscrutable expression, somewhere before that day. And as he walked away and thought the matter over, the impression grew stronger and stronger upon him that, either in a picture or in the flesh, he had seen the man’s face before. CHAPTER XII