A cry broke from Nora's trembling lips. He had gone—he had left her. He had the right to go! And she was alone. She looked at the clock ticking peacefully on the mantelpiece. She had no clear plan, but she saw that it was half-past seven, and she reckoned that the Potsdamer Bahnhof could not be more than twenty minutes away. If she could get a cab there would be time. For what? She did not know. She was still panic-stricken. The silence oppressed her with a greater horror than the roaring of the crowd. The little room, with its cheap, ugly ornaments, had become absolutely unfamiliar to her. She felt that it was impossible she could ever have lived here, she felt that she had wandered into a stranger's house, and that he might come back any minute and find her. She ran to the door. No bond, no link of memory or past happiness held her back. Not even the grey Litewka hanging in the hall, with its silent reminder, could change the headlong course of her resolution. She saw it, she even stopped to look at it. It spoke to her of a man she had known long ago, who had gone out of her life and was no more than the memory of a dream. Because it had been a beautiful dream she bent and kissed the empty sleeve, but she did not hesitate, and her eyes were tearless. Stronger than that memory was the craving for home and the fear of the stranger who would return and find her. Thus she fled, and the door of the little flat closed with a melancholy clang. It was empty now—when the stranger came there would be no one there to trouble his peace. She felt neither remorse nor pity. All that had been love for her husband had turned to bitterness. He had come between her and those dear to her; he had insulted her and her whole nation; he had trampled on her pride; he had deserted her, leaving her to fight her battle alone, whilst he had followed his ambition behind locked doors, which even she could not open. As she drove rapidly through the streets he stood before her mental vision, not as the lover or the husband, but as the man who had faced her on the preceding night, stern, resolute, pitiless, sweeping her from his path as he would have done a valueless toy. He had had no thought for her sufferings, he had not even tried to comfort her, but had gone to his room and—worked. And between this man of iron and routine and the immense implacable force which had revealed itself to her in the crowd, there was a resemblance, nay, an affinity of mind and purpose. Both threatened her home, her people, and her life. She hated both.
Twenty minutes later she stood in the crowded railway-station. Miles was nowhere to be seen. There were only three minutes left before the train started, and she had not money enough in her purse to take her even to the coast. Tears of helpless wretchedness rushed to her eyes. She must go—she must escape. She could never return to the silent, dreary home, to the man who had become a hated stranger.
On every side she heard the same words, "Der Krieg! Der Krieg!" They terrified her, exasperated her. A little crowd of English people, who were hurrying to the train, arrested her attention.
"We should have left before," one of them said. "All the places will be taken."
In her despair she could have flung herself upon their mercy, but the crowd jostled her on one side, and they were lost to sight.
"Alles einsteigen! Alles einsteigen!"
It was then she saw Miles; just for one instant she saw his face. It stood out clearly in the blur—white, aghast, full of a terrified recognition, and then, as she held out her hands, too thankful to think what it all meant, it disappeared.
She stood there, stupefied, rooted to the ground. He had deserted her—he had been afraid of her. Why? What had happened?
"Alles einsteigen! Alles einsteigen!"
A sob broke from Nora's lips, and even in that moment, in which all hope seemed lost, Arnold stood at her side. She clung to him recklessly, like a child who has been pursued by the phantom of some hideous nightmare.