takes me all my life I'll
find her and I'll marry her."

Like a man in a state of coma he returned to his hotel in Bordeaux,
and there, for the first time in his life, he drank himself into
forgetfulness.

CHAPTER 11. AN UNEXPECTED ALLY

For several days Merriman, sick at heart and shaken in body, remained on
at Bordeaux, too numbed by the blow which had fallen on him to take any
decisive action. He now understood that Madeleine Coburn had refused him
because she loved him, and he vowed he would rest neither day nor night
till he had seen her and obtained a reversal of her decision. But for
the moment his energy had departed, and he spent his time smoking in the
Jardin and brooding over his troubles.

It was true that on three separate occasions he had called at the
manager's house, only to be told that Mr. and Miss Coburn were still
from home, and neither there nor from the foreman at the works could he
learn their addresses or the date of their return. He had also written
a couple of scrappy notes to Hilliard, merely saying he was on a fresh
scent, and to make no move in the matter until he heard further. Of
the Pit-Prop Syndicate as apart from Madeleine he was now profoundly
wearied, and he wished for nothing more than never again to hear its
name mentioned.

But after a week of depression and self-pity his natural good sense
reasserted itself, and he began seriously to consider his position. He
honestly believed that Madeleine's happiness could best be brought
about by the fulfilment of his own, in other words by their marriage. He
appreciated the motives which had caused her to refuse him, but he
hoped that by his continued persuasion he might be able, as he put it
to himself, to talk her round. Her very flight from him, for such he
believed her absence to be, seemed to indicate that she herself was
doubtful of her power to hold out against him, and to this extent he
drew comfort from his immediate difficulty.

He concluded before trying any new plan to call once again at the
clearing, in the hope that Mr. Coburn at least might have returned. The
next afternoon, therefore, saw him driving out along the now familiar
road. It was still hot, with the heavy enervating heat of air held
stagnant by the trees. The freshness of early summer had gone, and there
was a hint of approaching autumn in the darker greenery of the firs, and
the overmaturity of such shrubs and wild flowers as could find along
the edge