She made the best selection she could from the limited stock at her disposal, and left the shop with her parcel under her arm. Half way up the drive to the hotel, she stood still and stared incredulously at her purchases; she had spent considerably over thirty shillings--she must have gone mad! She walked on slowly with bent head. A pioneer that had got left behind; what an impulsive fool she was! Pioneers that got left behind didn't count; they were lost, utterly lost in the desert. How could the young turn back for the old? In any case they didn't do it, and one could not catch up with the young when one was forty-three. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE 1 AT the end of the pleasant hotel dining-room sat a big, florid man, alone at a table. His reddish hair was sprinkled with grey and so were the small side-whiskers he affected. His large hands held a wine-card delicately, as though, used to some work that necessitated extreme fineness of touch. His jaw was perhaps a trifle too massive, his mouth a trifle too aggressive in expression, but his eyes were eager and limpid, and his smile was frank and very kind. He put down the wine-card and looked about him. His fellow guests interested him, people always did. These people were like their prototypes in every English hotel that he had ever been to; dull men with duller wives, dreary examples of matrimonial stagnation. Dull sons with dull fathers, dull daughters with dull mothers. The two girls with bobbed hair sat together and chattered incessantly, but even they looked commonplace in their evening dresses, which did not suit them or their weather-stained necks and hands. From his vantage-point, facing the swing doors, he could see the full length of the room. Even the way people walked had a significance for him; he was wont to say that you could read a person's whole life history in the way they moved. As he looked towards the entrance, two women came in; an old and very feeble lady wearing a white lace cap, and a middle-aged woman with short, grey hair, who supported her companion on her arm. In her disengaged hand she carried a white, fleecy shawl and a bottle of medicine, while tucked away under her elbow was a box-shaped thing that looked like a minute foot-warmer. The two women seated themselves at a window table quite near the man. "Open the window, dear," he heard the old lady say; "this room is stuffy." The younger woman did as she was asked, and he noticed that the window seemed too heavy for her. They drank their soup in silence, but presently the old lady shivered. "It's colder than I thought," she said plaintively. "I think we'll have it shut, after all." Her companion rose obediently and closed the window, then she put the small box-shaped object under the other's feet. "So it was a foot-warmer!" thought the man with some amusement. He bent a little forward, the better to hear what they would say. "I'm eavesdropping," he thought, "but they interest me."