Having exhausted the interests of the town, they spent the time in long drives to the places she expressed a wish to see in the country; an occupation not pre-eminently adapted to an evasive relationship. On the fourth morning she said to him, simply: "I can't stand it any more. You must go." "Have I been a brute?" he asked. "No," she said; "you've been extremely nice. Perhaps that's why. I don't know: I've tried not to know. Perhaps I may feel differently when I meet you again. I can't say. I daresay not. But I can't go on as we are. You don't mind my asking, do you? I don't think you wanted to stay. Why should you? I can make up something to Henry about your going: there's always the telegraph to account for things. And don't write, please, unless I ask you to. I'm going to try to forget you--if I can. What's the use of doing anything else? I've been a fool enough as it is." There was in Caragh's eye the remembrance of days when it seemed as if that desired oblivion would be his to seek, days when his devotion had appeared to be quite obliterated from her memory by the surprising splendour of some one else. That was, of course, the last thing of which he could remind her, but it was, too, the last he could forget. He had accepted the real misery of those days without murmuring; at least he might use their ancient poison as an anodyne now. Not to excuse, nor to exalt himself, but to dilute, as it were, now that he had to drink it, the cup of her indignation. It made the sour of that seem, at least, not quite so much of his own mixing to remember that, twice at least in the last two years, he might have drifted from her on occasions when her attention was too engrossed by another to notice that he was gone. He would have liked in the friendliest fashion to have led her memory to those days, to show her how dispensable he was; only, he reflected one never knew how a woman would take that sort of consolation: he was not very sure if he would value it himself. And when it came to his good-byes, he felt anything but fitted for the consoler's office. He had come to Pest bitterly grieved to lose a friend; but he left it like a baffled lover. The shy strangeness of her manner and the proud distance in her eyes had brought again about Ethel Vernon the glamour of days when his heart beat quicker at her approach. With every hour of indifference the old provocation in her presence grew. He felt that to stay would be but to yield to it again, and he heard with a dismal relief her sentence of exile. He set himself rigidly to pack his things, yet where to go he could not determine. That invisible bond which tied him to the future made all the difference to a man's plans. The East beckoned--he was half way to it--and the green harbours of the Asian coast.