Pausing for an instant she heard Jock sniffing interrogatively beneath the door; and knew he was hoping desperately that it would open to give him freedom; but with the tears running down her face she went slowly down the steps and was swallowed up by the cold, wet fog which lurked, ghost-like, round the house. Leonard Dowson was waiting for her, impatiently, feverishly, by the car; but one glance at her warned him that this was no time for lover-like protestations. He helped her in, covering her with the big fur rug he had had the forethought to bring; and then, with a delicacy which could only have been taught him by love, he left her alone in the interior of the car and mounted the seat beside the chauffeur. Even now he could hardly believe his good-fortune. With all his education, his later Socialistic tendencies, his conviction that one man was as good, primarily, as another, and that only brains and application counted in the race of life, he could never bring himself to look on Toni as an ordinary human being, inferior to him by reason of her sex, her less scientific brain, her lack of the power, mental and physical, which was, to him, the prerogative of manhood. Other women he might judge contemptuously or admiringly, as the case might be. But he could never consider Toni as a woman like those others--possibly because to him she was not _a_ woman, but--mystical distinction!--_the_ woman. In a vague, unreasoning way he recognized Toni's limitations. She was not clever, not even what he called well-educated. She would never fill any important position in the world, would never shine in any public capacity, would never seek to usurp man's prerogatives, and would be content to live quietly in some little corner of the world without longing to dash into the battlefield of human desires and human conflicts, as other women were doing every day. But through it all Toni was the one woman he loved, the woman who represented to him all that was loveliest and best of her sex; and this narrow-chested, narrow-minded and quite unattractive young dentist had this much of greatness in his soul, that he could love a woman completely. The car was running smoothly through the streets of a little town when there was a loud report, which even Toni, roused from her half-dazed stupor, recognized as the bursting of a tyre; and the next instant Leonard appeared at the door of the car, concern and apprehension in his face. "I am so sorry--one of the front tyres has burst, and the man will have to repair it as well as he can in the fog." "Where are we?" asked Toni idly, seeing beyond the figure of Dowson a few blurred lights as of houses or shops. "Luckily we are at Stratton," said Leonard more cheerfully. "Right in front of some sort of an hotel, too. Won't you come in a moment and get warm? It's too foggy and damp for you to wait out here."