g that
it would all come right.

'Look at the thing practically,' he thought. The faster he walked the
firmer became his conviction that he could still see it through. He took
out his watch--it was past seven--he began to hasten back. In the yard of
the inn his driver was harnessing the horses; Swithin went up to him.

"Who told you to put them in?" he asked.

The driver answered, "Der Herr."

Swithin turned away. 'In ten minutes,' he thought, 'I shall be in that
carriage again, with this going on in my head! Driving away from
England, from all I'm used to-driving to-what?' Could he face it? Could
he face all that he had been through that morning; face it day after day,
night after night? Looking up, he saw Rozsi at her open window gazing
down at him; never had she looked sweeter, more roguish. An inexplicable
terror seized on him; he ran across the yard and jumped into his
carriage. "To Salzburg!" he cried; "drive on!" And rattling out of the
yard without a look behind, he flung a sovereign at the hostler. Flying
back along the road faster even than he had come, with pale face, and
eyes blank and staring like a pug-dog's, Swithin spoke no single word;
nor, till he had reached the door of his lodgings, did he suffer the
driver to draw rein.

XII

Towards evening, five days later, Swithin, yellow and travel-worn, was
ferried in a gondola to Danielli's Hotel. His brother, who was on the
steps, looked at him with an apprehensive curiosity.

"Why, it's you!" he mumbled. "So you've got here safe?"

"Safe?" growled Swithin.

James replied, "I thought you wouldn't leave your friends!" Then, with a
jerk of suspicion, "You haven't brought your friends?"

"What friends?" growled Swithin.

James changed the subject. "You don't look the thing," he said.

"Really!" muttered Swithin; "what's that to you?"

He appeared at dinner that night, but fell asleep over his coffee.
Neither Traquair nor James asked him any further question, nor did they
allude to Salzburg; and during the four days which concluded the stay in
Venice Swithin went about with his head up, but his eyes half-closed like
a dazed man. Only after they had taken ship at Genoa did he show signs
of any healthy interest in life, when, finding that a man on board was
perpetually strumming, he locked the piano up and pitched the key into
the sea.

That winter in London he behaved much as usual, but fits of moroseness
would seize on him,