He arranged her hot-water can and her rugs and sat down by her side, thrusting up the dividing arms impatiently. As soon as the train had moved out of the station he put his arms around her and kissed her, and spoke to her in tender, passionate words. The stop at Croydon broke the continuity of this first wedded embrace. On the platform outside the carriage window a loud altercation was in progress between the ticket-collector and a young couple who objected to pay for the ticket of a tiny terrier the woman was carrying. They were of the lower middle class, both in their Sunday clothes. She was a fair, delicate woman of some refinement; but the husband was coarse, vulgar, with the stamp of sensuality on his sharp, somewhat handsome face. Moreover, he was slightly intoxicated, and used a foul expression to qualify the collector after the official had departed. A flush rose to the young woman's forehead.
“Don't, John,” she pleaded. “He's in his rights.”
But the cad consigned his rights to perdition, and moved off vulgarly proclaiming his own.
Clytie had heard this small scene in a life's drama and she vividly constructed the miserable tragedy. When the train moved on again she shivered, with a nameless, indefinable sense of fear. Three months ago she would have noted the scene for vigorous transference to canvas. Now the woman more than the artist was stirred.
“Please don't talk—just for a little, Thornton,” she said as he began to speak.
He looked at her somewhat reproachfully. She drew off her glove and put her hand into his.
“You can't understand—it all seems so strange. Let me gather myself together for a moment—darling.”
She trembled on the last word. It was the first time she had used it to him.
He pressed her hand and leaned back on the cushions. Clytie looked out of the window at the telegraph poles and trees and broad fields swaying past. Whither was this tearing train carrying her? Out of her life into a new, strange world whose habits and customs and laws and speech were all foreign to her? She was married. She no longer belonged to herself. Her independence was gone. She had promised to love, honour, and obey this man by her side until death should part them. That would be a long time—many, many years. The thought frightened her. Until then she had scarce realised what married life meant, in this respect. Why had she married this man? As this question passed through her mind her husband raised the hand he held to his lips. The blood rushed hot to her cheeks, she did not finish the mental question, but turning quickly, looked at him for a moment, and falling under the spell of his eyes, yielded to his arm, forgetting all things. He had the power of drowning in a more lurid blaze those glimmerings of self-revelation. She whispered so to him laughingly, and he accepted it as a man generally does accept such things—not seeing that it was of deeper significance than a woman's ordinary tribute of tenderness.
“You are my beautiful Clytie,” he said, kissing her, and for a season she was content with the response.