So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his feet. He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train--the first stop should have been Westboro' Abbey. "Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you arranged so cleverly!--and the Westboro' people will go on without us." Would they indeed! Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it. But his attention to the train's procedure had come too late. He opened the window and looked out. They stood at the side of a switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train. He drew in his head and quietly asked his companion: "What has happened to us, do you know?" She laughed deliciously. "Know? Why, of course, I do. You're delightful! Of course I have followed every step of the plan--the special for Dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour, doesn't it? We make the boat for Calais, and there Gela meets me and _your_ mission is done!" The gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to suppose loved another man than her husband. The woman opposite him was escaping from her husband. _That_ was what she was doing! He who had striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same thing. He did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any trick had been played upon him. The only thing he did _not_ believe was that the woman knew him! Before, however, brushing the delusion aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "And my mission being so done, what then becomes of you?" The shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself wholly to Fate--an abandon. "What becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?" "Her Fate," said her companion, "has no single history. She is most often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful." "Ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far. If you only intended to lecture me--to condemn me--why did you come?" At this sincerely humorous challenge Bulstrode smiled. "I did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and I assure you I am here against my will. You refuse to listen to me; you turn my efforts to put things straight against me--and now." The handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes.