The great train thundered on straight down through the heart of France. Almost the length of it separated Quixtus and Clementina. They had seen each other only for a few moments amid the bustle of the hurrying platform—just long enough for her quick vision to perceive, in the uncertain blue light of the arc-lamps, a haunted look in his eyes that was absent when she had first met him that afternoon. He had spoken a few courteous phrases; he had inquired whether Tommy and Etta, who clung to her to the last, were to be fellow travellers, whereon Clementina had very definitely informed him that Etta was staying with friends in Paris, while Tommy had arranged to visit a painter chum at Barbizon; he had expressed the hope that when they arrived at Marseilles she would command his services, and, after a bareheaded leave-taking of the two ladies, which caused Etta afterwards to remark that it was only her short skirt that had prevented her from making her court curtsey, he had gone in search of his own compartment. Etta had flung her arms round Clementina’s neck. “Oh, Clementina darling, do come back soon! The Jacksons are kind, but, oh, so stuffy! And Tommy is going to Barbizon, and I shan’t see him, and if you don’t come back soon, he’ll have forgotten all about me.” Tommy had given her a great hug and kissed her. “Good-bye, dear. God bless you. Come back soon. We can’t do without you.” And Clementina, pausing on the first step of the railway carriage, had turned and raised her hand—the unfilled finger-ends of her cotton gloves projecting comically—and cried: “Good-bye, you dear, selfish, detestable, beloved children!” And neither of the twain had known what in the world she meant. The great train thundered on through the country which Clementina had traversed a month or so before with Tommy—Dijon, Macon, Lyons. . . . Things had changed since then. Then a sweet rejuvenescence had crept through her veins; then she had amused herself with the idea of being a lady. The towns, whose names shouted through the awful stillness of the stations otherwise only broken by the eerie clank of the wheel-testers’ hammers were now but abstract stages on her journey, then had a magical significance. . . . That must be Vienne through which they were dashing. . . . If the bitter-sweet, the tragi-comedy, the cardiac surgery of Vienne had not brought a smile to Clementina’s lips in the dark solitude of her compartment, would she have been the sturdy, humorous Clementina who had cried her farewell to the children? Things had changed since then, she assured herself. She was just Clementina again, fighting her battles alone, impatient, contemptuous, unfeeling; no longer a lady, merely a female dauber, ready once more to paint elderly magnates’ trousers at so much per leg. . . . She sighed and laughed. Those had been pleasant times. . . . That she should be going over the same ground now with Quixtus seemed a freakish trick of destiny.