And neither of the twain had known what in the world she meant.
The great train thundered on through the country which Clementina had traversed a month or so before with Tommy—Dijon, Macon, Lyons. . . . Things had changed since then. Then a sweet rejuvenescence had crept through her veins; then she had amused herself with the idea of being a lady. The towns, whose names shouted through the awful stillness of the stations otherwise only broken by the eerie clank of the wheel-testers’ hammers were now but abstract stages on her journey, then had a magical significance. . . . That must be Vienne through which they were dashing. . . . If the bitter-sweet, the tragi-comedy, the cardiac surgery of Vienne had not brought a smile to Clementina’s lips in the dark solitude of her compartment, would she have been the sturdy, humorous Clementina who had cried her farewell to the children? Things had changed since then, she assured herself. She was just Clementina again, fighting her battles alone, impatient, contemptuous, unfeeling; no longer a lady, merely a female dauber, ready once more to paint elderly magnates’ trousers at so much per leg. . . . She sighed and laughed. Those had been pleasant times. . . . That she should be going over the same ground now with Quixtus seemed a freakish trick of destiny.
At nine o’clock in the morning the train entered Marseilles Station. Quixtus came speedily up to Clementina as she stepped on to the platform, and offered his services. He trusted she had slept well and had a comfortable journey.
“Didn’t sleep a wink,” said Clementina. “Did you?”
Quixtus admitted broken slumbers. The strangeness of the adventure had kept him awake.
“You’re looking ill this morning,” said Clementina, glancing at him sharply. “What’s the matter with you?”
He seemed careworn, feverish, and an unnatural glitter had replaced the haunted look in his eyes. Clementina did not know how the approaching consummation of a deed of real wickedness terrified the mild and gentle-natured man. Hitherto his evil doings had been fantastic, repaired almost at once as if mechanically by the underlying instinct of generosity; his visions of sin had been fantastic, too, harmless, unpractical; but this sin of vengeance which he had intellectually conceived and fostered loomed great and terrible. So does the braggart who has sworn to eat up a lion alive, totter at the knees when he hears the lion’s roar. His night had been that of a soul on fire.
“Something’s wrong. What is it?” asked Clementina.
He answered vaguely. This summons had upset him. It had set him thinking, a tiring mental process. He remembered, said he, how Hammersley, when they were boys together, had called him to see a dying butterfly on a rose-bush. The yellow wings were still flapping languidly; then slower and slower; then strength gave out and they quivered in the last effort; and then the hold on the rose-bush relaxed and the butterfly fell to the earth—dead.
“What does Monsieur wish done with the baggage?” asked the attendant porter, who had listened uncomprehendingly to the long and tragical tale.