g," she told him simply--"watching every post for word from
you. I shan't worry, only for you."

He got up slowly from his chair, and stood half choking with
unutterable words.

"I know no way to thank you," he managed to say at last.

"For what?"

"For everything--kindness, charity, sympathy--"

"What are those things?" she demanded with a nervous little laugh.
"Words! Just words that you and I use to hide behind, like timid
children..." She rose suddenly and offered him her hand. "But I don't
think it's any use, my friend, I'm quite sure that neither of us is
deceived. No: say nothing more; the time is not yet and--we both can
wait. Only know I understand ... Go now"--her fingers tightened round
his--"but don't stay away any longer than you must, don't be influenced
by silly traditions, false and foolish standards when you think of me.
Go now"--she freed her hand and turned away--"but oh, come safely back
to me, my dear!"

XII

TRAVELS WITH AN ASSASSIN

Under a sky whose misty silver pulsed with waves of violet light and
dim glimmerings of gold, Lanyard, grey with the dust and weariness of
twenty leagues of heavy walking, trudged into the sleeping streets of
the town of Tournemire.

In the railway station--whose buvette served him such listless
refreshment as one may find at railway lunch-counters and nowhere else
the world over--a train was waiting with an apathetic crew and a
sprinkling of sleepy passengers, for the most part farm and village
folk of the department. There was nowhere in evidence any figure
resembling that of an agent de police.

Lanyard made enquiry, found that the train was destined for Le Vigan,
on the eastern slope of the Cevennes, and purchased a ticket for that
point.

Making himself as comfortable as might be in a depressingly third-rate
second-class compartment (there was no first class, and the third was
far too richly flavoured for his stomach) he cultivated a doze as the
train pulled out. But, driven as provincial trains habitually are, in a
high spirit of devil-may-care, its first stop woke him up with a series
of savage, back-breaking jolts which were translated into jerks when it
started on again and fiendishly reiterated at every suspicion of a
way-station on the course. So that he presently abandoned all hope of
sleep and sought solace in tobacco and the shifting views afforded by
the windows. Penetrating the upper valley of the Cernon, the railroad
skirted the