"Better get in, sir," he said to Mark, who, in his Inverness cape and rough cap, looked the traveller.
Archibald pushed Betty into the coupé and shook hands with Mark.
"You must tell us everything when we get back. It has been a great shock," he stared at the red tie; "but I'm delighted to see you looking so well."
He sprang into the coupé as the train began to move. Betty pushed him aside and leaned out of the window. Mark never forgot the expression on her face framed by the small, square window. The engine was screeching lamentably, like a monster in agony. Another train was entering the station, adding its strident note to the chorus, filling the atmosphere with clouds of white steam. A third-class carriage full of soldiers glided by. The soldiers, mostly boyish recruits, were singing at the top of their voices, "Good-bye, my lover, good-bye." A girl standing near burst into hysterical sobbing. Mark noted these details, as a man notes some irrelevant trifle in a dream, which remains part of that dream for ever after. But his eyes were on Betty's face. She had been borne away by a force slow but irresistible, the relentless Machine, the symbol of progress, of Fate, if you will, which tears asunder things and men, and brings some together again, but not all, nor any just as they were before. The face was white and piteous, the face of an Andromeda. Upon it, in unmistakable lines, were inscribed regret and reproach. Mark turned sick. He had wished to save this woman; had he sacrificed her?
Betty heard her husband say, "This has been very upsetting." Immediately she laughed, withdrawing her face from the window. Nothing else, probably, would have erased the tell-tale lines. She thought that her laugh was a revelation of what was passing in her mind; but Archibald took other notice of it.
"You laugh?" he said heavily. "I know what has happened. I am not much surprised. Mark has gone over to Rome. Really, my dear little woman, you must not laugh like that. I give you my word that I am terribly distressed. That red tie!"
"The scarlet woman."
"Pray don't joke! This is most upsetting."
She laughed again, knowing that she was on the verge of hysterics, trying to control herself. The train, rushing on out of the mists of London into the splendid May sunshine of the country, rocked violently as it crossed the points. Betty fell back upon the cushions, still laughing and repeating Archibald's words.
"Upsetting? I should think so."