their pens in epithets, if
his heart diverges inch or ell.

Bryan Summerhay was neither more curious nor more complicated than
those of his own sex who would condemn him for getting into the midnight
express from Edinburgh with two distinct emotions in his heart--a
regretful aching for the girl, his cousin, whom he was leaving behind,
and a rapturous anticipation of the woman whom he was going to rejoin.
How was it possible that he could feel both at once? "Against all the
rules," women and other moralists would say. Well, the fact is, a man's
heart knows no rules. And he found it perfectly easy, lying in his bunk,
to dwell on memories of Diana handing him tea, or glancing up at him,
while he turned the leaves of her songs, with that enticing mockery in
her eyes and about her lips; and yet the next moment to be swept from
head to heel by the longing to feel Gyp's arms around him, to hear her
voice, look in her eyes, and press his lips on hers. If, instead of
being on his way to rejoin a mistress, he had been going home to a
wife, he would not have felt a particle more of spiritual satisfaction,
perhaps not so much. He was returning to the feelings and companionship
that he knew were the most deeply satisfying spiritually and bodily
he would ever have. And yet he could ache a little for that red-haired
girl, and this without any difficulty. How disconcerting! But, then,
truth is.

From that queer seesawing of his feelings, he fell asleep, dreamed of
all things under the sun as men only can in a train, was awakened by the
hollow silence in some station, slept again for hours, it seemed, and
woke still at the same station, fell into a sound sleep at last that
ended at Willesden in broad daylight. Dressing hurriedly, he found he
had but one emotion now, one longing--to get to Gyp. Sitting back in
his cab, hands deep-thrust into the pockets of his ulster, he smiled,
enjoying even the smell of the misty London morning. Where would she
be--in the hall of the hotel waiting, or upstairs still?

Not in the hall! And asking for her room, he made his way to its door.

She was standing in the far corner motionless, deadly pale, quivering
from head to foot; and when he flung his arms round her, she gave a long
sigh, closing her eyes. With his lips on hers, he could feel her almost
fainting; and he too had no consciousness of anything but that long
kiss.

Next day, they went abroad to a little place not far from Fecamp, in
that