"I do not know you," he said determinedly. "You do not know me, but you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state it."
But even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite agreeing with him:
"If I had ever spoken with you—been near you before, I would not be here now. You see it is just your impersonality—your having no connection with anything in my life that makes it possible! But why," she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in this meaningless warfare? You should, it seems, take the honor more graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me a little kindness. Since, after all, willingly or not, you are in effect nobly helping me to do what I am doing."
And this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he doing? What was he supposed to be furthering here? It was his expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "Just how much do you know?"
The poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately. "You can't think how in the dark I am! How beyond words mystified."
"How droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here. You see we have switched off—just as you said we would do."
So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his feet. He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train—the first stop should have been Westboro' Abbey.
"Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you arranged so cleverly!—and the Westboro' people will go on without us."
Would they indeed! Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it. But his attention to the train's procedure had come too late.
He opened the window and looked out. They stood at the side of a switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train. He drew in his head and quietly asked his companion: