And then he began to pace up and down with his watch in his hand. Nobody came. He opened the door, it was all silent. With a sigh--was it relief or disappointment?--he ran down the steps and hastened to the station. People who passed him said that M. Deshoulieres was--giving up at last; there was a worn dragged look on his face, like that of a man under the first touch of illness. Poor man! There were two or three conflicting currents in his heart, such as wear lines before they have been running very long. An hour of their work will do more than a few years of age, who is but a slow labourer after all. Fabien was come--this man of whose love he had never known until he had given that away which now he could never more take back. Fabien had come, and there would be a marriage; and Therese would be carried away, and he--? Well, he should remain in Charville, go through that daily round so like, and yet so unlike, itself; worry the Prefet, be victimised by Veuve Angelin--it was not very interesting when he looked at it in this downright, colourless fashion, but still it was there; so far as a future could be foretold, this was the future to which he had to look forward. Most people have once or twice in their lives gone through that desolate time when before them stretches out a grey, cheerless, sunless prospect, a long dusty road, as it were, along which there must be a solitary plodding. Until we have tried it ourselves we cannot believe that, after all, the first view is the saddest part of it; that as we go along we come to hidden banks, in which starry flowers are blossoming--walls, painted with delicate bright lichen--tiny wayside streams--crystals in the dust--all manner of sweet surprises, and evermore above them all the eternal blue of heaven. Afterwards, when we are in the midst of them, we wonder how the dreary road has become so beautiful; but beforehand it appals us. Perhaps life never looked so sad to Max Deshoulieres as in that little journey from Charville to Maury. When he reached the station the sun was setting. From out of a yellow western sky, a great dusky red grey vapour stretched upwards half across the heavens, and on this again lay purple horizontal bands of cloud. The little town was within a stone's throw of the station; a cluster of cold-looking ugly houses, and on an eminence a church, with a quaint tower running up between its low apse and the nave. M. Deshoulieres made straight for the church, skirted it, and found himself in front of a bran-new hotel, having a narrow facade, a little court, and stiff evergreens ranged round in bright green tubs. "M. Saint-Martin? Certainly. Would monsieur have the goodness to pass this way?"