"No, thanks."
"Will you not light a cigarette?" asked Dolly. "Here are some of your own."
"No, thanks," answered Vanbrugh absently. "I have just smoked."
"Do sit down and warm yourself," said Dolly, pushing a chair towards the fire.
"Well—thanks—I suppose Mrs. Willoughby will be gone some minutes. Have you thought of what might happen if Darche were alive?" he asked, reverting to the subject uppermost in his mind.
"I do not like to think of it. But I cannot help thinking of it," she answered almost inaudibly. "I know that I cannot, and I hate myself and everybody."
"We may have to think of it seriously in three or four hours," said Vanbrugh. "Brown will bring me word. He will dine with me, and I will be within reach in case anything happens."
"What a head you have!" exclaimed Dolly. "You ought to be a general."
"It is simple enough, it seems to me, as simple as going back to stop an express train when there has been an accident on the line."
"Yes, but it is always the one particular man who has more sense than the rest who thinks of stopping the express train."