The roaring grew unbearable: it drove him mad; and, with his fingers in his ears, he began to run he did not know where, and he again tripped on some rail and fell. On the sides of the tunnel there shone a red, gloomy light, but he did not see it; above the roar and rattle of the racing wheels there sounded the hot, quick panting of some monster, but he did not hear it. He knew one moment of awful shock, of the sense of being torn and battered in pieces; then the roar sank down, as the train passed on, and diminished into silence as it emerged from the darkness of the tunnel into the pure and glorious sunlight of that September morning. And to him who had been pitiless and relentless in life had come death as swift and relentless as himself. Amelie and Bertie were at the fore-end of the platform when the express drew up, and they turned back. Just as they got opposite the engine, Bertie gave one short gasp of horror, and grasped his wife's arm. 'Bertie, what is it?' she said. 'Go on, Amelie,' he said quickly. 'Don't look to right or left, but walk straight on.' She obeyed him, and he went to the engine-driver. 'There is something on your engine,' he said. EPILOGUE It was a March day of glorious windy brightness, and all down the glades of Molesworth, where Bertie and Amelie had sat one hot morning in June last year, innumerable companies of daffodils danced and flickered in the sun. The great trees were yet for the most part bare of leaves, but round the birches a green mist hovered, and the red buds on the limes were ready to burst. Boisterous, but warm and fruitful, and teeming with the promise of the opening year, the wind shouted through the branches, and bowled, as a child bowls a hoop, great fleecy clouds across the blue of the sky. Movement, light, fruitfulness of the warm earth, were all triumphant; the strength of all that lived was renewed; spring was there. To-day Amelie was pacing alone up and down the glade near the fallen tree-trunk where she had sketched before. She walked briskly, for it was not yet a day to loiter in; and as she came to the end of her beat within sight of the house, she looked eagerly towards it as if expecting someone. But the brilliance of her face and of the smile that every now and then hovered round her lips was in no way diminished when she turned again without seeing him whom she waited for. It seemed she was content to wait, and, though eager, did not fear disappointment.