artily glad when the trial was over. It was now the end of
April--close to the date of May 3rd, when the truce between Larssen and
himself would expire. The shipowner would be back in London, and no
doubt would have heard from Olive something of the changed situation.
Force of circumstance would make him readjust his attitude, and he would
probably be ready to offer compromise.

Riviere judged it advisable to return to England, and there to wait for
overtures on the part of Larssen. He had taken ticket for London, and
was preparing for travel, when two letters reached him, from Olive and
Elaine.

The latter gave him a keen thrill of pleasure. It was written by Elaine
herself, and this was proof indeed of the miracle of surgery wrought by
Dr Hegelmann. But its contents made him very thoughtful. She was asking
him to go back to his wife. She was pointing out to him a path of duty
exceedingly hard to tread.

Olive's letter added further pressure on his feelings. She was advised
to try a sea-voyage for her health, she told him; Larssen had placed his
yacht at her disposal; she begged her husband to meet her at Boulogne
and once more to give her a chance to explain. It was an appeal utterly
different to the attitude she had taken at Wiesbaden--there was now a
sincerity in it which Riviere could not mistake.

The enclosure in Elaine's letter did not surprise him. If Larssen of his
own accord offered to extend the truce until May 20th, it must mean that
the shipowner was aware of his shaky position and ready to suggest
compromise.

The effect of those three communications on Riviere's mind was what
Larssen had so shrewdly planned. Riviere wired to his wife that he would
meet her at Boulogne Harbour.

That evening he caught a Paris express with a through P.L.M. carriage
for Boulogne. At the Gare de Lyon, in the early morning, they shunted
him round the slow and tedious Girdle Railway to the Gare du Nord,
clanked him on the boat train, and sped him northwards again in a
revigorated burst of railway energy. North of Paris, a P.L.M. carriage
undergoes a marked change of character. It deferentially subdues its
nationality, and takes on an Anglo-American aspect. Harris-tweeded young
men pitch golf-bags and ice-axes on the rack, and smoke bulldog pipes
in its corridors with an air of easy proprietorship. American spinsters,
scouring Europe in couples, order lunch in high-pitched American without
troubling to translate. The few