They parted, and the great P. L. M. train carried Hugh swiftly northwards. He had spoken truly. He was under a deep obligation to the quiet, kind-hearted man whose calm judgment and equable nature formed a complete sedative to the fever of his mind, whose companionship was a cool hand on a hot brow. A great need of expansion had been the reaction from the intense restraint of the month preceding his trial. His thoughts paid Cahusac grateful tribute.
A study of time-tables suddenly brought him to realisation of the date. It was the anniversary of his wedding day. The first. It was scarcely credible. The disastrous twelvemonth, viewed in retrospect, seemed a space of many years. The memory of the first wedded kiss of Minna’s young ripe lips came faintly as if from a far past, yet not without a spasm of revulsion; the memory of a succubus. Elemental sex feelings, determining hatred, bend a man’s judgment of a woman to elemental fierceness. For this reason often are women beaten. He tried to shake off the haunting sense of her caresses—to bury her existence in oblivion. But she was too essential a factor in this ruin of lives amongst which he was walking. What had become of her? He clenched his hands together, and wished that she was dead.
Yet what was she doing? The petty and incongruous question teased him.
A train whirred past. Was it a strange fatality, or an equally strange telepathic sub-consciousness? In that train was Minna, convalescent after a long illness, being carried on to Marseilles, where she was to catch the steamer to Smyrna. So husband and wife passed each other in the darkness, on the first anniversary of their wedding-day, and the soul of each was filled with passionate repudiation of the other. And in either case the starry woman, whom one worshipped and the other dreaded and envied, was the determining cause.
CHAPTER XVII
The train drew up slowly beside the platform at Victoria, three-quarters of an hour late. Hugh stood by the half-opened door, in a fume of impatience. He had telegraphed from Paris to Irene that he would be with her at eight. It was that hour now. He must go straightway, for he had resolved to have speech with her that night, and further delay would render his visit untimely. A porter from the Grosvenor Hotel came running up at his call, and took charge of his bag and hold-all. Relieved of responsibilities of luggage, he pushed his way through the hurrying stream of passengers on the platform, towards the cab-rank. But before he could engage a cab, he heard the light patter of hastening footsteps behind him, and his name uttered in a familiar voice. He turned in astonished delight.
“Irene!”
“Another minute and I should have missed you,” she said somewhat breathlessly.