By and by, breaking into the open again, I came upon an inn, favored of tourists, that stood back from a road. I was parched and exhausted, and thought a glass of beer would revive me to a fresh start. Walking into the tap I passed by the open door of the coffee-room, and there inside were they seated at a table together, and a waiter was uncorking a bottle of champagne behind them. Why didn’t I go in then and there? I had found my quarry and the game might yet be mine. Ask the stricken lover who will pursue his lady hotly through anxious hours and then, when he sees her at last, will saunter carelessly by as if his heart were cold to her attractions. Some such motive, in a form infinitely baser, was mine. I may call it pride, and hear the wheel creak out a sardonic laugh. “They seem happy enough without me,” my heart said, but my conscience knew the selfishness that must nurse an injury above any sore need of the injurer. Their voices came to me happy and merry. They had not seen me. I drank my beer and stole outside miserably temporizing with my duty. “She sha’n’t escape again,” I thought; “I’ll go a little distance off and watch.” I waited long, but they never came. At length, stung to desperation, I strode back to the inn and straight into the coffee-room. It was empty. Seeing a waiter, I asked him if the lady and gentleman who had lunched at such a table had left. “Yes,” he said. He believed the lady and gentleman had gone into the forest by the garden way. Then I was baffled again. Surely the curse of the virago of the morning was operating after all. Evening drew on, and at last there was no help for it but to make for the station and catch our usual train back to town. They were standing on the platform when I reached it. I walked straight up to them. Dolly flushed crimson when she saw me and then went pale as a windflower, but she never spoke a word. “Hullo!” said Jason. “The wanderer returned. We’ve had a rare day of it; and you have, too, no doubt.” I spoke steadily, with a set determination to prove master of myself. “I’ve been looking for you all day. Dolly, I’m sorry I left you in a temper. Please forgive me, dear.” “Oh, yes,” she said, indifferently and weariedly. “It doesn’t matter.” “But it does matter to me, Dolly, very much, to keep your good opinion.” She turned and looked at me with a strange expression, as if she were on the point of bursting into tears, but she only ended with a little formless laugh and looked away again. “I don’t think you can value my good opinion much, and I’m sure I don’t know why you should.” The train lunging in at this point stopped our further talk; and, once seated in it, the girl lay back in her corner with closed eyes as if asleep. Jason sat silent, with folded arms, the lamplight below the shadow cast by his hat brim emphasizing the smile on his firmly curved lips; and I, for my part, sat silent also, for my heart seemed sick unto death.