e start for the honeymoon,--a start made amid a crowd of
laughing, cheering friends, from the little station she had just left.

She remembered the delicious tremor which had come over her when she
had found herself at last alone, really alone, with her three-hour-old
bridegroom.

How infinitely kind and tender Frank had been to her!

And then Agnes reminded herself, with tightening breath, that men like
Frank Barlow are always kind--too kind--to women.

Other journeys she and Frank had taken together came and mocked her, and
especially the journey which had followed a month after little Francis's
birth.

Frank had driven with her, the nurse, and the baby, to the station--but
only to see them off. He had had a very important case in the Courts
just then, and it was out of the question that he should go with his
wife to Littlehampton for the change of air, the few weeks by the sea,
that had been ordered by her good, careful doctor.

And then at the last moment Frank had suddenly jumped into the railway
carriage without a ticket, and had gone along with her part of the way!
She remembered the surprise of the monthly nurse, the woman's prim
remark, when he had at last got out at Horsham, that Mr. Barlow was
certainly the kindest husband she, the nurse, had ever seen.

But these memories, now so desecrated, did not make her give up her
purpose. Far from it, for in a queer way they made her think more
tenderly of Gerald Ferrier, whose life had been so lonely, and who had
known nothing of the simpler human sanctities and joys, and who had
never--so he had told her with a kind of bitter scorn of himself--been
loved by any woman whom he himself could love.

In her ears there sounded Ferrier's quick, hoarsely uttered words:
"D'you think I should ever have said a word to you of all this--if you
had gone on being happy? D'you think I'd ask you to come to me if I
thought you had any chance of being happy with him--now?"

And she knew in her soul that he had spoken truly. Ferrier would never
have tried to disturb her happiness with Frank; he had never so tried
during those two years when they had seen so much of each other, and
when Agnes had known, deep down in her heart, that he loved her, though
it had suited her conscience to pretend that his love was only
"friendship."

III

The train glided into the fog-laden London station, and very slowly
Agnes Barlow stepped down out of the railway carriage. She felt
oppress