At the railway refreshment-room, he had breakfast, eating with some appetite; then he drove to the terminus of another line.  The streets of Paris, dim vistas under a rosy dawn, had no reality for his eyes; the figures flitting here and there, the voices speaking a foreign tongue, made part of a phantasm in which he himself moved no less fantastically.  He was in Paris; yet how could that be?  He would wake up, and find himself at his lodgings, and get up to go to business in Fulham Road; but the dream bore him on.  Now he had taken another ticket.  His bag was being registered—­for St. Jean de Luz.  A long journey lay before him.  He yawned violently, half remembering that he had passed two nights without sleep.  Then he found himself seated in a corner of the railway carriage, an unknown landscape slipping away before his eyes.

Now for the first time did he seem to be really aware of what he was doing.  Rosamund had taken flight to the Pyrenees, and he was in hot pursuit.  He grew exhilarated in the thought of his virile energy.  If the glimpse of him aproned and behind a counter had been too great a shock for Rosamund’s romantic nature, this vigorous action would more than redeem his manhood in her sight.  “Yes, I am a grocer; I have lived for a couple of years by selling tea and sugar—­not to speak of treacle; but none the less I am the man you drew on to love you.  Grocer though I be, I come to claim you!” Thus would he speak and how could the reply be doubtful?  In such a situation, all depends on the man’s strength and passionate resolve.  Rosamund should be his; he swore it in his heart.  She should take him as he was, grocer’s shop and all; not until her troth was pledged would he make known to her the prospect of better things.  The emotions of the primitive lover had told upon him.  She thought to escape him, by flight across Europe?  But what if the flight were meant as a test of his worthiness?  He seized upon the idea, and rejoiced in it.  Rosamund might well have conceived this method of justifying both him and herself.  “If he loves me as I would be loved, let him dare to follow!”

To-morrow morning he would stand before her, grocerdom a thousand miles away.  They would walk together, as when they were among the Alps.  Why, even then, had his heart prompted, had honour permitted, he could have won her.  He believed now, what at the time he had refused to admit, that Franks’ moment of jealous anger was not without its justification.  Again they would meet among the mountains, and the shop in Fulham Road would be seen as at the wrong end of a telescope—­its due proportions.  They would return together to England, and at once be married.  As for the grocery business—­

Reason lost itself amid ardours of the natural man.

He paid little heed to the country through which he was passing.  He flung himself on to the dark platform, and tottered drunkenly in search of the exit. Billet?  Why, yes, he had a billet somewhere.  Hotel?  Yes, yes, the hotel,—­no matter which.  It took some minutes before his brain could grasp the idea that his luggage cheque was wanted; he had forgotten that he had any luggage at all.  Ultimately, he was thrust into some sort of a vehicle, which set him down at the hotel door.  Food?  Good Heavens, no; but something to drink, and a bed to tumble into—­quick.