"No, but isn't it true—I mean my meeting you this way? Confess, now. You were on your way back to town wounded and indignant, with a firm resolve never to see any one you'd met at Lulford again, weren't you?"
"Yes, I think so."
"But you're not now?"
"I don't know. I must have time to think."
He seemed quite satisfied with the answer, being used possibly to oblique affirmations from women.
A culvert and signal-box appeared suddenly above the hedge to their right.
"You'd better get down here. There's a foot-path at the side of the main road." He flushed deeply as he held her in his arms. Another checked impulse, no doubt.
In the waiting-room they sat, one on each side of a sullen fire in a black stove. He smoked a cigar, and steam rose from the drenched skirts of his coat.
"I'm going to Biarritz almost immediately," he said; "but Dollfus knows what to do. Call on him as soon as you possibly can. I don't see myself there's much more training wanted, but you must be fitted in somewhere, and that takes time."
He might have added that it takes money too—some one's money—but it was not the moment to enlarge on this. Fenella listened to his advice respectfully and gave him her address when he asked for it. She liked him no better, but, at the point they had reached, she felt it necessary, for her own satisfaction, that she should take the least complicated view of his helpfulness that was possible. To take a great deal and to give a little is a prerogative that the nicest of women think it no shame to use. She bought her own ticket, but let him order foot-warmers and even literature—The Tattler, Photo Bits, and a novel by Charles Garvice, to be brought her at Wolverhampton. He was back at her side as the train, chafing fussily at the check to its course, began to move out of the little country station.