"And you're not making this sudden journey to London after her? Remember, you must put that out of your mind; I say _must_ advisedly, because there's no other word to use in the matter. You can't blink the thing away, my dear: she belongs to some one else, and you've done with her. If you don't recognise that, it only means disaster for both of you. With a man and a woman in such a situation there are two things for the man to do: if he can't run away _with_ her, then, by the Lord, he must run away _from_ her!" "But I am not going to London to see her," said Comethup. "I'm afraid you're magnifying the matter; she is married, happily married, and all the other is forgotten and done with. Won't you understand that?" "Yes, if you tell me so. I am very glad, for your sake, to hear you say it. And, if it pleases you, we'll set off for London at once." One thought was uppermost in Comethup's mind--that he must not see 'Linda. In the first place, he felt pretty certain that the fact of his having been appealed to on her own and her husband's behalf had not been revealed to her; and, in the second, he was not quite sure yet that he could bear to meet her. That she must, at all costs, be kept from want and suffering he had fully determined; all the bright hopes and dreams he had had, even from his boyhood, concerning her were swept aside and done with--things that never had been. The fortune that had been placed in his hands and which had seemed once so wonderful was now nothing, save that by its aid, in an indirect fashion and without her knowledge, he could benefit her; he was glad to think that he still possessed that power at least. For his wanderings had not changed him. Solitary for the most part, except for the companionship of the strange old woman who loved him and would have done so much to help him, he had seen, in every place he visited, the face of the girl always before him; had gone over, in imagination, words she had spoken to him; had lived again through scenes of those brief half-happy weeks in which he had thought she loved him.