Mrs. Wilkins were shattered; try as they would not to,
both felt extraordinarily guilty; and when on the morning of the 30th
they did finally get off there was no exhilaration about the departure,
no holiday feeling at all.

"We've been too good--much too good," Mrs. Wilkins kept on
murmuring as they walked up and down the platform at Victoria, having
arrived there an hour before they need have, "and that's why we feel as
though we're doing wrong. We're brow-beaten--we're not any longer real
human beings. Real human beings aren't ever as good as we've been.
Oh"--she clenched her thin hands--"to think that we ought to be so
happy now, here on the very station, actually starting, and we're not,
and it's being spoilt for us just simply because we've spoilt them!
What have we done--what have we done, I should like to know," she
inquired of Mrs. Arbuthnot indignantly, "except for once want to go
away by ourselves and have a little rest from them?"

Mrs. Arbuthnot, patiently pacing, did not ask who she meant by them,
because she knew. Mrs. Wilkins meant their husbands, persisting in her
assumption that Frederick was as indignant as Mellersh over the departure
of his wife, whereas Frederick did not even know his wife had gone.

Mrs. Arbuthnot, always silent about him, had said nothing of this
to Mrs. Wilkins. Frederick went too deep into her heart for her to
talk about him. He was having an extra bout of work finishing another
of those dreadful books, and had been away practically continually the
last few weeks, and was away when she left. Why should she tell him
beforehand? Sure as she so miserably was that he would have no
objection to anything she did, she merely wrote him a note and put it
on the hall-table ready for him if and when he should come home. She
said she was going for a month's holiday as she needed a rest and she
had not had one for so long, and that Gladys, the efficient
parlourmaid, had orders to see to his comforts. She did not say where
she was going; there was no reason why she should; he would not be
interested, he would not care.

The day was wretched, blustering and wet; the crossing was
atrocious, and they were very sick. But after having been very sick,
just to arrive at Calais and not be sick was happiness, and it was
there that the real splendour of what they were doing first began to
warm their benumbed spirits. It got hold of Mrs. Wilkins first, and
spread from her like a rose-colo