“Where?” she asked, somewhat taken aback by his decided tone. “I am putting in some time at Chiltern Towers. I had a letter this morning from the duchess, asking me to come and meet the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck.” They looked at each other, and Norma laughed. “Beware of Her Serene Highness.” “Oh, I've had dealings with her before,” replied Weever. “I reckon I get my money's worth. Don't you fret about me.” The guard came up and touched his cap. “We are off now, miss.” She shook hands with Weever, saying with a laugh, “I hope you will find that bit of decoration.” “Don't you fret about that, either,” he said with a quick, hard glance. “I'm in no hurry. I can wait.” The train started, and was soon swallowed by a tunnel a few hundred yards up the line. Norma patrolled the platform of the little wayside station waiting for Morland. The place was very still. The only porter had departed somewhither. The station-master had retired into his office. The coachman outside the station sat like a well-bred image on his box, and the occasional clink of the harness, as the horses threw up their heads, sounded sharp and clear. Nothing around but mountain and moorland; a short distance in front a ravine with a lazily trickling, half-dried-up mountain stream. Here and there a clump of larch and fir, and a rough granite boulder. An overcast sky threw dreariness on the silent waste. Norma shivered, suddenly struck with a sense of isolation. She seemed to stand in the same relation with her soul's horizon as with the physical universe. The man that had gone had left her with a little feeling of fear for the future, a little after-taste of bitterness. The man that was coming would bring her no thrill of joy. As she stood between a drab sky and a bleak earth, so stood she utterly alone in the still pause between a past and a future equally unillumined. She longed for the sun to break out of the heaven, for the sounds of joyous things to come from plain and mountain; and she longed for light and song in her heart. She had been watching for the past few days the proceedings of a half-recognised, irregular union. The woman was the frivolous, heartless, almost passionless wife of a casual husband at the other end of the earth; the man an underbred fellow on the stock exchange. She ordered him about and called him Tommy. He clothed her in extravagant finery, and openly showed her his sovereign male's contempt. Norma had overheard him tell her to go to the devil and leave him alone, when she hinted one night, in a whisper that was meant for his ears alone, that he was drinking overmuch whisky. It was all so sordid, so vulgar--the bond between them so unsanctified by anything like tenderness, chivalry, devotion. Norma had felt the revulsion of her sex.