Ten minutes afterwards Baltazar was speeding eastwards, grimly smiling. By skilful contrivance he had despatched the helpful Quong Ho upstairs to Marcelle at the last moment, and had pitched Godfrey’s kit into the dining-room and had driven off without it. If the infatuated youth would not listen to reason or the lady to the plainest of speech, he should go off to his love in a cottage unromantically destitute of toothbrush and pyjamas. Ridicule kills. The boy would hate him for the moment; but would assuredly live to bless him. Once in France, he would have no time for folly. The imperious man’s thoughts flew fast. The lady herself should cure the boy. He would see to that. If he couldn’t break an Edna Donnithorpe, bring her to heel, he was not John Baltazar. In his jealousy for the boy’s honourable career he swept the woman’s possible emotions into the limbo of inconsiderable things. What kind of a woman was she, anyhow, to have married a rat like Donnithorpe? He read her in rough intolerance. Just a freak of thwarted sex. That was it. If nothing was discovered, she would return to her normal life and, sizing up the episode in her cold intellectual way, would discover that the game was not worth the candles supplied by the old woman in the remote cottage, and would send Godfrey packing to any kind of Byronic despair. If the intrigue came out and there was a divorce and subsequent marriage, there would be the devil to pay. The taxi clattered through the gloomy archway approaches at Waterloo and drew up at the end of the long line of cabs at the entrance to the station. The summer exodus from London was just beginning, and the outside platform was a-bustle with porters, trucks, passengers and luggage. Baltazar, after paying his fare, lingered for a moment at the great door of the Booking Hall, and then entered and passed through it into the hurrying station. A queue stood at the suburban ticket office. He scanned it, but no Godfrey. He walked the length of the platform entrances, through the crowds of passengers and their dumps of luggage and knots of soldiers, some about to entrain, sitting on the ground with their packs around them, others, newly arrived on leave: Australians with their soft hats, wiry Cockneys still encased in the clay of the trenches, officers of all grades and of all arms. Presently at the central bookstall, turning away, his arms full of periodicals, Godfrey came into view. Baltazar approached smiling. His son’s face darkened. “I didn’t expect to see you here, sir.” “If you want to study the ways of a country, there’s nothing like its great railway stations. They’re a favourite haunt of mine.” “It’s rather stuffy under this glass roof, don’t you think?” said Godfrey. “I don’t mind it, my boy,” replied Baltazar cheerfully. “But it’s lucky I hit upon Waterloo. I shall be able to see you off. By the way, where are you going?” “Somewhere Southampton way, sir,” said Godfrey stiffly.