"I have come," said he, dumping his portmanteau in the passage, "to take you and Jean away from this abomination of a place. It is a Tophet reserved for those who are not good enough for hell. In hell there is dignity, _que diable!_ Here there is none. I know what you have suffered. I know how they insult you. I know what they say. You cannot stay one more night here. Pack up all your things. Pack up all Jean's things. I have my valise here. I walk to St. Albans and I come back for you in an automobile. You lock up the door. I tell the policeman to guard the cottage. You come with me. We take a train to London. You and Jean will stay at a hotel. I will go to my good friend who saved me from Madam Gougasse. After that we will think." "That's just like you," she said, smiling in spite of her trouble, "you act first and think afterwards. Unfortunately I'm in the habit of doing the reverse." "But it's I who am doing all the thinking for you. I have thought till my brain is red hot." He laughed in his luminous and excited way, and, seizing both her hands, kissed them one after the other. "There!" said he, "be ready by the time I return. Do not hesitate. Do not look back. Remember Lot's wife!" He flourished his hat and was gone like a flash into the heavy rain and darkness of the December evening. Anne cried after him, but he too remembering Lot's wife would not turn. He marched on buoyantly, heedless of the wet and the squirting mud from unseen puddles. It was an adventure such as he loved. It was a knightly errand, _parbleu!_ Was he not delivering a beautiful lady from the dragon of calumny? And in an automobile, too! His imagination fondled the idea. At a garage in St. Albans he readily found a car for hire. He was all for driving it himself--that is how he had pictured the rescue--but the proprietor, dull and unimaginative tradesman, declined firmly. It was a hireling who drove the car to Beverly Stoke. Anne, unhatted and uncloaked, admitted him. "You are not ready?" "My dear friend, how can I----?" "You are not coming?" His hands dropped to his sides and his face was the incarnation of disappointment. "Let us talk things over reasonably," she urged, opening the parlour door. "But I have brought the automobile." "He can wait for five minutes, can't he?" "He can wait till Doomsday," said Aristide. "Take off your dripping coat. You must be wet through. Oh, how impulsive you are!" He took off his overcoat dejectedly and followed her into the parlour, where she tried to point out the impossibility of his scheme. How could she abandon her home at a moment's notice? Failing to convince him, she said at last in some embarrassment, but with gentle dignity: "Suppose we did run away together in your romantic fashion, would it not confirm the scandal in the eyes of this wretched village?" "You are right," said Aristide. "I had not thought of it."