tal, nothing seems to matter except that pain.

I walked fast to the station, about a mile distant, and made enquiries
as discreetly as I could.

"No," was the unanimous answer. Mrs. Lonsdale had certainly not left
there by any train that morning, nor been there at all, nor hired a
fly from there. They were all quite sure of that.

She was well known at the station, so it seemed improbable she could
have been there unobserved.

There was another station up the line six miles distant. She might
easily have walked to that to avoid notice.

I took a fly, and drove to the other station, but here Viola was not
known personally, and though I described her, and was assured she had
not been seen there, it was indefinite and uncertain information that
settled nothing.

She might have gone from there to town by an early train unnoticed, or
she might have gone down the line to another country place to elude
me. I could tell nothing.

Feeling sick and dispirited, I drove back to the station and then
walked on to the house.

When I went upstairs the room was in disorder just as I had left it.
As I entered the bed caught my eye, the pillow her head had so lately
crushed, and there beside it the delicate garment she had been wearing
a few hours ago.

An immense, a devastating sense of loss came over me. A feeling of
suffering so intense and so vast, it seemed to crush me beneath it
physically as well as mentally.

I sank down in the armchair, laid my head back and closed my eyes. I
ceased to think any more, I was unconscious of anything except that
sense of intense suffering.

By that evening I had everything packed, all the bills paid; and I
took the seven-o'clock train to town. I felt to stay there the night,
to attempt to sleep in that room so full of memories of her was an
impossibility. Something that would drive me mad if I attempted it.

The people of the house stared at me when I paid them, and the maids
looked frightened when I addressed them, but I hardly saw them, doing
what was necessary in a mechanical way, with all my senses turned
inward, as it were, and blunted by that one overpowering idea of loss.

The two hours in a fast train did me good. I had a sort of
subconscious feeling I was going to her by going to town which buoyed
me up instinctively; but the reaction was terrible when I actually
arrived and drove to some rooms I knew in Jermyn Street and realised
that I was indeed alone.

I sat up all t