“I’ll find one, then,” said Triona, and putting on the heavy khaki coat and gripping suit-case in one hand and kit-bag in the other, he set off along the Euston Road. As he neared the station entrance, he staggered along, aching and sweating. What a fool he had been not to foresee this idiot difficulty! What a fool he had been to give way to sleep. He came in view of the clock. Given a cab, he would still have time to catch the train at Victoria. He had it on his brain that his salvation depended on his catching the train at Victoria. He stumbled into the outer court, past the hotel wings. An outgoing taxi-cab swirled towards him. He dropped his burdens and stood in its path with upheld arms. There was a sudden pandemonium of hoarse cries, a sounding of brakes. He glanced round just in time to see, for a fraction of a second, the entering motor-lorry which struck him down. CHAPTER XIX OLIVIA struggled for a fortnight against Circumstance, when Circumstance got the upper hand. But it had been a valiant fight from the moment Myra, on her return to the flat, had delivered Triona’s scribbled note, and had given her account of the brief parting interview. “It’s just as well,” she said. “It’s the only way out.” She made a brave show of dining, while Myra waited stoically. At last, impelled to speech, she said: “Well, what do you think of it?” “How can I think of what I know nothing about?” said Myra. “Would you like to know?” “My liking has nothing to do with it,” said Myra brushing the crumbs off the table. “If you tell me, you tell me because it may help you. But—I know it’s not a Christian thing to say—I’m not likely to forgive the man that has done you an injury.” “He has done me no injury,” said Olivia. “That’s what I want you to know. No injury in the ordinary sense of the word.” She looked up at Myra’s impassive face, and met the dull blue eyes, and found it very difficult to tell her, in spite of lifelong intimacy. Yet it was right that Myra should have no false notions. “I’ve discovered that my husband’s name is not Alexis Triona. It is John Briggs.” “John Briggs,” echoed Myra. “His father was a labourer in Newcastle. He was a chauffeur in Russia. All that he had said about himself and written in his book is untrue. When he left us last summer to go to Finland, he really went to Newcastle to his mother’s death-bed. Everything he has told me has been a lie from beginning to end. He—oh, God, Myra——” She broke down and clutched her face, while her throat was choking with dry sobbing. Myra came swiftly round the table and put her arm about her, and drew the beloved head near to her thin body. “There, there, my dear. You can tell me more another time.” Olivia let herself be soothed for a while. Then she pulled herself together and rose. “No, I’ll tell you everything now. Then we’ll never need talk of it again. I’m not going to make a fool of myself.”