“What!” she cried.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I am no boasting boy,” he said sadly. “Everything to make life worth living will be gone, and an easy painless death beckoning me on. I am a doctor, I have but to go home, and there it is, to my hand.”
She said nothing, but sank back in the corner of the carriage, covering her face with her hands; and he saw that her breast was heaving with the painful sobs struggling for exit.
He bent over towards her, and touched her arm.
“Marion,” he whispered.
She started from him as if she had been stung, and her eyes flashed as her hands fell into her lap.
“Don’t touch me!” she said wildly. “You are mad.”
The train sped on rapidly, taking them nearer and nearer to their fate, as both sat back in silence now—she trembling, battling with her heart in her struggle to devise some means of escaping him, he sinking into a dull, stolid state of determination, for, come what might, he was resolved never to leave her now.
At last the train slowed up to the station where the tickets were taken, and Marion handed hers.