The prospect of a journey to Paris with this woman in pursuit of another man's wife was bad enough, but it was not this prospect that made Jones furious, though assisting. No doubt, it was Venetia herself. She raised the devil in him, and on the journey to the station, though she said not a word, she managed to raise his exasperation with the world, herself, himself and his vile position to the limit just below the last.--The last was to come. At the station they walked through the crowd to the booking-office where Venetia bought the tickets. Reminiscences of being taken on journeys as a small boy by his mother flitted across the mind of Jones and did not improve his temper. He looked at the clock. It wanted twenty minutes of the starting time and he was in the act of evading a barrow of luggage when Venetia arrived with the tickets. It had come into the mind of Jones that not only was he travelling to Paris with the Hon. Venetia Birdbrook, in pursuit of the wife of another man, but that they were travelling without luggage. If, in Philadelphia, he had dreamt of himself in such a position he would have been disturbed as to the state of his health and the condition of his liver, yet now, in reality, the thing did not seem preposterous, he was concerned as to the fact about the want of luggage. "Look here," said he, "what are we to do--I haven't even a night-suit of pyjamas. I haven't even a toothbrush. No hotel will take us in." "We don't want an hotel," said Venetia, "we'll come back straight if we can save Teresa. If not, if she insists in pursuing her mad course, you had better not come back at all. Come on and let us take our places in the train." They moved away and she continued. "For if she does you will never be able to hold up your head again, everyone knows how you have behaved to her." "Oh, stop it," said he irritably. "I have enough to think about." "You ought to." Only just those three words, yet they set him off. "Ought I? Well, what of yourself? She told me last night things about _you_." "About me. What things?" "Never mind." "But I do," she stopped and he stopped. "I mind very much. What things did she tell you?" "Nothing much, only that you worried the life out of her, and that though I was bad you were worse." Venetia sniffed. She was just turning to resume her way to the train when she stopped dead like a pointer. "That's them," she said, in a hard, tense whisper. Jones looked. A veiled lady accompanied by a bearded man, with a folded umbrella under his arm and following a porter laden with wraps and small luggage, were making their way through the crowd towards the train. The veil did not hide her from him. He knew at once it was she. It was then that Venetia's effect upon him acted as the contents of the white-paper acts when emptied into the tumbler that holds the blue-paper-half of the seidlitz powder. Venetia saw his face. "Don't make a scene," she cried. That was the stirring of the spoon.