cousin's house. No! Don't speak. I can't
bear to think of it. I would follow you there and smash the door!"

The catch in his voice astonished her by its resemblance to a sob. It
frightened her too. The thought that came to her head was: "He mustn't."
He was putting her into the hansom. "Oh! He mustn't, he mustn't." She
was still more frightened by the discovery that he was shaking all over.
Bewildered, shrinking into the far off corner, avoiding his eyes, she yet
saw the quivering of his mouth and made a wild attempt at a smile, which
broke the rigidity of her lips and set her teeth chattering suddenly.

"I am not coming with you," he was saying. "I'll tell the man . . . I
can't. Better not. What is it? Are you cold? Come! What is it? Only
to go to a confounded stuffy room, a hole of an office. Not a quarter of
an hour. I'll come for you--in ten days. Don't think of it too much.
Think of no man, woman or child of all that silly crowd cumbering the
ground. Don't think of me either. Think of yourself. Ha! Nothing will
be able to touch you then--at last. Say nothing. Don't move. I'll have
everything arranged; and as long as you don't hate the sight of me--and
you don't--there's nothing to be frightened about. One of their silly
offices with a couple of ink-slingers of no consequence; poor, scribbling
devils."

The hansom drove away with Flora de Barral inside, without movement,
without thought, only too glad to rest, to be alone and still moving away
without effort, in solitude and silence.

Anthony roamed the streets for hours without being able to remember in
the evening where he had been--in the manner of a happy and exulting
lover. But nobody could have thought so from his face, which bore no
signs of blissful anticipation. Exulting indeed he was but it was a
special sort of exultation which seemed to take him by the throat like an
enemy.

Anthony's last words to Flora referred to the registry office where they
were married ten days later. During that time Anthony saw no one or
anything, though he went about restlessly, here and there, amongst men
and things. This special state is peculiar to common lovers, who are
known to have no eyes for anything except for the contemplation, actual
or inward, of one human form which for them contains the soul of the
whole world in all its beauty, perfection, variety and infinity. It must
be extremely pleasant. But felicity was denied to Roderi