Then the long train journey, and the agony which feared to betray itself in some insane fashion which might cause her to be stopped—forcibly prevented from reaching her destination.
She wanted to shriek aloud, to rave and cry, like the madwoman she half feared she might in fact have become.
Of the next few weeks she recalled nothing but a confused nightmare impression of unfamiliar rooms, strange faces, strange voices. Of people who for some mad reason were going about as usual, occupied with the ordinary business of life; talking, laughing, eating and drinking, unmoved, unconcerned.
One book on every hotel table drew her like a magnet. She would sit down anywhere with a Bradshaw before her, and at once, mechanically plan her journey back to Paris.
Over and over again, she looked out trains, studied connections, pictured the moment of her arrival.
It would be tea-time. The lamps just lit. René sitting by the fire—René leaping to his feet to meet her.
Or it would be early morning. She would open his bedroom door softly....
And then the realization of her madness; more sleepless nights, fresh strange hotels, new cities up and down whose streets she wandered wondering why she should be there, why she should enter one building rather than another, why the day never passed, and when the night came, thinking would God that it were morning.
So terribly near seemed her past torture, that with all her strength Anne tried to stem the flood of reminiscence.
Thank God, little Madge Dakin had never known, would never know, misery such as hers! In the midst of her whirl of memories Anne gratefully considered this.