They were at a loss to say anything; checked in their joke of routing out old Miss Protheroe, they gazed uncomprehending at the scene before them. Their eyes turned again towards Miss Protheroe; she stood erect and prim, her hands clasping her elbows. “You don’t know my relations,” she said, and, indicating them, “my sister, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, my brother.” She effected the introduction with irreproachable gravity. “She’s mad,” cried Bertie suddenly, reason flooding him, and he pointed at her with a denouncing hand. They stared, first at those four crazy figures, and then at the stiff correctness of Miss Protheroe as they always knew her. PATIENCE I He had only to seclude his mind in order to imagine himself in the train again, to hear its steady beat, and to sway monotonously with its rocking. As soon as he had isolated himself in this day-dream, he was impervious to the sights and sounds that washed round on the outskirts of his consciousness. He was safely withdrawn. He sat staring, not at the green baize of the card-table, where his wife, with white, plump, be-ringed hands, under the strong light thrown down by the shaded lamp, set out the neat rows of shiny cards for her Patience; he sat staring, sheltered within the friendly shadows, not at this evening security of his home, but out through the rectangular windows of the train, that framed the hard blaze of the southern country, the red rocks and the blue sea; the train curving in and out of tunnels, round the sharp promontories, disclosing the secrets of little bays, the pine-trees among the boulders, and the blackened scrub that betokened a previous hillside fire. Opposite him, _she_ slept, curled up in the corner of the seat, very young and very fragile under the big collar of soft fur of her coat thrown over her to keep off the dust. He had wished that she would look out of the window with him; he knew how she would sit up, and the quick impatient gesture by which she would dash the hair out of her eyes, but she slept so peacefully, so like a child, that he would not wake her. He bent forward, knocking the ash of his cigarette off against the window-ledge, to get a better view out of the window; and every little creek, as the curving train took it out of view, he pursued with regretful eyes, knowing that he would not pass that way again. This forlorn and beautiful coast, whose every accident was so faithfully followed by the train, this coast, every bit of it, was a party to his happiness, and he had been reluctant to let it go. How his heart ached! Perhaps it was not wholesome to have trained his mind to enter so readily, so completely, into that world of recollections? He dragged himself out: “Patience going well?” “Not very well to-night.”