art out--flame
of regret, revolt, desire--and I would ruthlessly extinguish it. I felt
that I had nothing to live for, that no energy remained to me, no
interest, no hope. I saw the forty years of probable existence in front
of me flat and sterile as the sea itself. I was coldly glad that I had
finished my novel, well knowing that it would be my last. And the immense
disaster had been caused by a chance! Why had I been born with a vein of
overweening honesty in me? Why should I have sacrificed everything to the
pride of my conscience, seeing that consciences were the product of
education merely? Useless to try to answer the unanswerable! What is, is.
And circumstances are always at the mercy of character. I might have been
wrong, I might have been right; no ethical argument could have bent my
instinct. I did not sympathize with myself--I was too proud and
stern--but I sympathized with Frank. I wished ardently that he might be
consoled--that his agony might not be too terrible. I wondered where he
was, what he was doing. I had received no letter from him, but then I had
instructed that letters should not be forwarded to me. My compassion went
out after him, followed him into the dark, found him (as I hoped), and
surrounded him like an alleviating influence. I thought pityingly of the
ravage that had been occasioned by our love. His home was wrecked. Our
lives were equally wrecked. Our friends were grieved; they would think
sadly of my closed flat. Even the serio-comic figure of Emmeline touched
me; I had paid her three months' wages and dismissed her. Where would she
go with her mauve _peignoir_? She was over thirty, and would not easily
fall into another such situation. Imagine Emmeline struck down by a
splinter from our passionate explosion! Only Yvonne was content at the
prospect of revisiting France.

'_Ah! Qu'on est bien ici, madame_!' she said, when we had fixed ourselves
in the long and glittering _train de grand luxe_ that awaited us at
Calais. Once I had enjoyed luxury, but now the futility of all this
luxurious cushioned arrogance, which at its best only corresponded with a
railway director's dreams of paradise, seemed to me pathetic. Could it
detain youth, which is for ever flying? Could it keep out sorrow? Could
it breed hope? As the passengers, so correct in their travelling
costumes, passed to and fro in the corridors with the subdued murmurs
always adopted by English people when they wish to prove that they