ich of his movements
were performed in cabs, which on foot, he could scarce have decided,
had he reflected on the matter during the night that followed. That
night was passed in the train, on a steamboat, then again on the
railway And before sunrise he was in Paris.

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.