The fast train, by which they ought to travel, left for London in a quarter of an hour; a slow train would follow twenty minutes later. Ashley procured this information before undertaking his search; since the platform was still crowded it seemed possible that Mr. Fenning would not be found in time for the fast train. He proved hard to find; yet he might have been expected to be on the look-out. Ashley sought him conscientiously and diligently, but before long a vague hope began to rise in him that the man had not come after all. What then? He did not answer the question. It was enough to picture Ora freed from her fears, restored to the thoughtless joyousness of their early days together. If by wild chance he had found the man dead or heard that he was dead, he would have been glad with a natural heathen exultation. People die on voyages across the Atlantic sometimes; there is an average of deaths in mid-ocean; averages must be maintained; how maintain one with more beneficial incidental results than by killing Mr. Fenning? Ashley smiled grimly; his temper did not allow the humour of any situation to escape him; he felt it even in the midst of the strongest feelings. His search for Jack Fenning, while Jack Fenning's wife sat in terror, while he loved Jack Fenning's wife, had its comic side; he wondered how matters would strike Jack, supposing him to be alive, and to have come; or, again, if he were dead and fluttering invisible but open-eyed over the platform.

He saw the girl who had been in the next carriage, hanging on a young man's arm, radiant and half in tears; but the young man was not like Jack's photograph. There were many young men, but none of them Jack Fenning. He scoured the platform in vain. A whistle sounded loud, and there were cries of "Take your seats!" Ashley looked at his watch; that was the express starting; they would be doomed to crawl to town. Where the plague was Jack Fenning? This suspense would be terrible for Ora. How soon could he be safe in going back and telling her that Jack had not come? What a light would leap to her face! How she would murmur, "Ashley!" in her low rich voice! She seemed able to say anything and everything in the world to him with that one word, "Ashley!" to help the eloquence of her eyes.

A rush of people scurrying out of the refreshment-room and running to catch the express encountered and buffeted him. Here was a place he had not ransacked; perhaps Jack Fenning was in the refreshment-room; a remembrance of Janet's anxiety about a good whiskey gave colour to the idea. Ashley waited till the exodus was done and then strolled in; the place was almost empty; the barmaids were reaching their arms over the counter to gather up the used glasses or wipe the marble surface with cloths. But at the far end of the room there was a man standing at the bar, with a tumbler before him; he was smoking and in conversation with the girl who served him. Ashley stood still on the threshold for a moment or two, watching this man. "This is my man," he said to himself; he seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of the fact and not to rely on any pose or air which he had noticed in the photograph; he knew that he was looking at Ora's husband, and stood and looked at him. The man had come; he was not dead; he was here, drinking at the bar. "How much would he take to go away again?" That was Ashley's thought. Then he shook his head and walked towards the man, who had just set his glass down empty.

"You'll have missed the express," said the girl behind the counter.

"I was bound to have a drink," protested the customer in a rather injured tone.

He turned away, stooped, lifted a hand-bag, and came down the room. Ashley noticed that his right hand was bandaged; he thought he noticed also a slight uncertainty in his walk; he did not lurch or stagger, but he swayed a little. "Just sixpenn'orth too much," was Ashley's summary. Then he walked up to the stranger and asked if he had the honour of addressing Mr. Fenning.

There remained always in Ashley Mead's mind a memory of Jack Fenning as he was that day, of his soft blurred voice, his abashed eyes, his slight swayings, and the exaggerated apologetic firmness (or even aggression) of gait that followed them, of his uneasy deference towards the man who met him, of his obvious and unfeigned nervousness on being told that Miss Pinsent was waiting for him. Had child married child? The question leapt to Ashley's thoughts. Here was no burly ruffian, full of drink and violence. He had been drinking, but surely as a boy who takes his second glass of birthday port, not knowing the snake which lurks among that pleasant, green grass? He had struck Ora; the ugly fact was there; yet now Ashley found himself asking whether children had not their tempers, whether they are to be judged as men are judged, as gentlemen claim to be judged. Jack Fenning came neither in a truculent resentment against his wife, nor in a masterful assertion of his rights, nor (which would have been worst of all) in a passion for her. He did not question Ashley's position, he did not ask how he came to be there; nor did he demand to be taken to his wife, nor did he fly to seek her.

"She's here, is she?" he said with an unmistakable accent of alarm.

"Yes, she's here. Come along. I'll take you to her," said Ashley curtly. He was angry to find his resentment oozing away. "Didn't you know she was coming to meet you?"

"She said she might," murmured Jack. "But I didn't think she would."

"I thought there'd be a crowd and so on, so I ran down with her," Ashley explained, despising himself for explaining at all.

"Awfully kind of you," said Mr. Fenning. "Where – where did you leave her?"

"Oh, on a seat on the platform. Where's your luggage?"

"Here." He held up the hand-bag.

"That all?"

"Yes, that's all," said Jack with a propitiatory smile. "I didn't see the good of bringing much." He paused and then added, "I haven't got much, you know." Another pause followed. "I hope that – that Miss Pinsent's all right?" he ended.

"Yes, she's all right. Come along." Then he asked abruptly, "Hurt your hand?"

Jack raised his hand and looked at it. "I got it burnt," he said. "We were making a night of it, and some fool made the poker hot – we had an open fire – and I didn't see it was hot and laid hold of it." He looked at his companion's face, which wore a grim smile. "Of course I shouldn't have done it if I hadn't had a drop too much," he added, smiling.

"Good God!" groaned Ashley to himself as he led the way. Wouldn't anything, the burly ruffian, the crafty schemer, or even the coarse lover, have been better than this? Any of them might have ranked as a man, any of them might have laid a grasp on Ora and ruled her life to some pattern. But what could or should this poor creature do? Why, he had come at her bidding, and now was afraid to meet her!

"Has she talked about me?" Jack asked timidly.

"Yes, a lot," said Ashley. He looked over his shoulder and sent a very direct glance into his companion's eyes. "She's told me all about it, or nearly all," he added. Jack looked ashamed and acutely distressed. Ashley felt sorry for him and cursed himself for the feeling. "You'll get along better now, I hope," he said, looking away. Then he smiled; it had occurred to him to wonder what all the folk who were so interested in the coming of Mr. Fenning would make of this Mr. Fenning who had come. For an embodiment of respectability, of regularity of life, and of the stability of the conjugal relation, this creature was so – there seemed but one word – so flabby.

"Is Janet still with Miss Pinsent?" asked Jack. It was evident that he hesitated as to what he ought to call his wife. There was a little pause before he pronounced her name.

"Yes," said Ashley. "Janet's there. She's ordered some whiskey you'll like." Jack, unobservant of sarcasm, smiled gratefully; he reminded Ashley of a child rather afraid of its parents and finding comfort in the presence of a kind familiar nurse. "It was about here I left Miss Pinsent," Ashley went on, glancing round.

There was the seat on which Ora had sat; but Ora was not on the seat. Ashley looked about, scanning the platform, seeking the graceful figure and gait that he knew so well. Jack put his bag down on the seat and stared at the roof of the station.

"I don't see her," said Ashley. "She must have moved." He glanced at Jack and added with a sudden burst of laughter, "Now you must stay here while I look for her!"

"You're very kind," said Jack Fenning, sinking down on the seat.

"I might be the father of twins," said Ashley, as he walked off. Jack, left alone, furtively unclasped the bag, sought a small bottle, and took a small mouthful from it; he wanted all his nerve to meet his wife.

Again Ashley Mead searched the station and ransacked the waiting-rooms; again in whimsical despair he explored the refreshment saloon; all were empty. What had become of Ora? He returned to the seat where Jack Fenning was. A tall burly guard stood by Jack, regarding him with a rather contemptuous smile. When Ashley approached he turned round.

"Perhaps you're the gentleman, sir?" he said. "Mr. Mead, sir?"

"I'm Mr. Mead," said Ashley.

"The lady who went by the express left this note for you, sir. I thought it was for this gentleman but he says it isn't."

"Thanks, I expect it's for me," said Ashley, exchanging a shilling for a scrap of twisted paper addressed to him in Ora's familiar scrawl. The guard looked at the pair with a faint curiosity, spun his shilling in the air, and turned away. They were, after all, a very unimportant episode in the life of the guard.

"I have gone. As you love me, don't let him follow me. I am heart-broken: – Ora."

Thus ran the note which Ashley read. At the last moment, then, the great drama had broken down, renunciation and reformation had refused to run in couples, the fine scenes would not be played and – the heroine had fled from the theatre! An agreement was an agreement, as Mr. Hazlewood insisted; but Ora had broken hers. Here was Ashley Mead with a stray husband on his hands! He laughed again as he re-read the note. Where had she gone, poor dear, she and her broken heart? She was crying somewhere with the picturesqueness that she could impart even to the violent forms of grief. His laugh made friends with a groan as he looked down on the flabby figure of Jack Fenning. That such a creature should make such a coil! The world is oddly ordered.

"What the devil are we to do now?" he exclaimed aloud, glancing from the note to Jack, and back from Jack to the note. The note gave no help; Jack's bewildered questioning eyes were equally useless. "She's gone," Ashley explained with a short laugh.

"Gone? Where to?" Helplessness still, not indignation, not even surprise, marked the tone.

"I don't know. You're not to follow her, she says."

Jack seemed to sink into a smaller size as he muttered forlornly,

"She told me to come, you know." His uninjured hand moved longingly but indecisively towards his bag. "Will you have a dram?" he asked.

"No, I won't," said Ashley. "Well, we can't stay here all night. What are you going to do?"

"I don't understand what you mean by saying she's gone," moaned Jack.

"It's all she says – and that you're not to follow. What are you going to do?"

His look now was severe and almost cruel; Jack seemed to cringe under it.

"I don't know," he muttered. "You see I – I've got no money."

"No money?"

"No. I had a little, but I had infernally bad luck at poker, coming over. You wouldn't believe how the luck ran against me."

Ashley put his hands in his pockets and regarded his companion.

"So you've no money?"

"About five shillings."

"And now you've no wife!"

Jack twisted in his seat. "I wish I hadn't come," he said fretfully.

"So do I," said Ashley. "But here you are!" He took a turn along the platform. The burly guard saw him and touched his hat.

"Train for London in five minutes, sir. The last to-night, sir. Going on?"

"Damn it, yes, we'll go on," said Ashley Mead. At least there was nothing to be gained by staying there. "Your ticket takes you through to London, I suppose?" he asked Jack.

"Yes, it does; but what am I to do there?" asked Jack forlornly.

Something restrained Ashley from the obvious retort, "What the devil do I care?" If he abandoned Jack, Jack must seek out Ora; he must track her by public and miscellaneous inquiries; he must storm the small house at Chelsea, braving Ora for the sake of Janet and the whiskey. Or if he did not do that, he would spend his five shillings as he had best not, and – visions of police-court proceedings and consequential newspaper broad-sheets rose before Ashley's eyes.

He took Jack to London with him. The return journey alone with Mr. Fenning was an unconsidered case, an unrehearsed effect. Mr. and Mrs. Fenning were to have gone together; in one mad pleasant dream he and Ora were to have gone together, with Jack smoking elsewhere. Reality may fail in everything except surprises. Ora was heaven knew where, heart-broken in Chelsea or elsewhere, and Ashley was in charge of Mr. Fenning.

"Good God, how everybody would laugh!" thought Ashley, himself hovering between mirth and ruefulness. The pencil of Babba Flint would draw a fine caricature of this journey; the circumstances might wring wonder even from Mr. Hazlewood's intimate and fatigued acquaintance with the ways of genius; as for Kensington Palace Gardens – Ashley suddenly laughed aloud.

"What's the matter?" asked Jack.

"It's all so damned absurd," said Ashley, laughing still. An absurd tragedy – and after all that Jack should come as he did, be what he was, and go on existing, was in essentials pure tragedy – seemed set on foot. "What am I to do with the fellow?" asked Ashley of himself. "I can't let him go to Chelsea." Nor, on reflection, could he let him go either to the workhouse or to the police-court. In fact, by an impulsive extension of the very habit which had appealed so strongly to his chivalry, Ora had thrown not herself only but her husband also on his hands!

London drew near, even for the slow train, and with London came the problem. Ashley solved it in a flash, with a resolve that preserved the mixture of despair and humour which had become his attitude towards the situation of affairs. Above him in his house by Charing Cross there lived a clerk; the clerk had gone for a month's holiday, and had given liberty to the housekeeper to let his bed-sitting-room (so the compound was termed) to any solvent applicant. Jack Fenning should occupy the room for this night at least; he would be safe from danger, from observation, from causing trouble at Chelsea or wherever his wife might be. Thus to provide for him seemed mere humanity; he had but five shillings and a weakness for strong drink; and although he had struck Ora (the violence grew more and more inconceivable), yet in a sense he belonged to her. "And something must happen to clear it all up soon," Ashley reflected in an obstinate conviction that things in the end went reasonably.

A short interview with the housekeeper was enough to arrange for Jack Fenning's immediate comfort; then Ashley took him into his own room and gave him an improvised supper, and some whiskey and water mixed very weak; Jack regarded it disconsolately but made no protest; he lugged out a pipe and began to smoke, staring the while into the empty grate. "I wonder where she's gone!" he said once, but Ashley was putting on his slippers and took no notice of the question. There lay on the table a note and a telegram; Jack's eyes wandered to them. "Perhaps the wire's from her," he suggested timidly.

"Perhaps," said Ashley, taking it up. But the message was from Alice Muddock and ran, "Father had a paralytic stroke to-day. Afraid serious. Will you come to-morrow?"

"It's not from Miss Pinsent," said Ashley, as he turned to the note. This was from Bowdon, sent by hand: "I'm glad to say that I've persuaded Irene to be married in a month from now. As you're such a friend of hers as well as of mine, I hope you'll be my best man on the occasion."

"And the note's not from her either," said Ashley, walking up to the mantel-piece and filling his pipe.

Jack leant back in his chair and gulped down his weak mixture; he looked up in Ashley's face and smiled feebly. Ashley's brows were knit, but his lips curved in a smile. The mixed colours held the field; here was poor old Sir James come to the end of his work, to the end of new blocks and the making of sovereigns; here was Bowdon triumphantly setting the last brick on the high wall behind which he had entrenched himself against the assault of wayward inclinations. Was Irene then at peace? Would Bob hold his own or would Bertie Jewett grasp the reins? Was Bowdon resigned or only fearful? What a break-up in Kensington Palace Gardens! What the deuce should he do with this man? And where in heaven's name was Ora Pinsent? Ashley's eyes fell on a couple of briefs which had been sent after him from the Temple; it seemed as though the ordinary work of life were in danger of neglect.

"We can't do anything to-night, you know," he said to Jack in an irritated tone. "You don't want to knock her up to-night, I suppose, even if she's at her house?"

"No," said Jack meekly.

"Are you ready for bed then?"

Jack cast one longing glance at the whiskey bottle, and said that he was. Ashley led him upstairs, turned on the gas, and shewed him the room he was to occupy. Desiring to appear friendly, he lingered a few moments in desultory and forced conversation, and, seeing that Jack's wounded hand crippled him a little, began to help him to take his things out of the bag and lay them in handy places. Jack accepted his services with regard to the bag, and set about emptying his own pockets on the mantel-piece. Presently Ashley, his task done, turned round to see his companion standing with back turned, under the gas jet; he seemed to be regarding something which he held in his hand.

"I think you'll be all right now," said Ashley, preparing to make his escape.

Jack faced round with a slight start and an embarrassed air. He still held in his hand the object which he had been regarding; Ashley now perceived it to be a photograph. Was it Ora's – Ora's, treasured through years of separation, of quarrel, of desertion and apparent neglect? Had the man then grace in him so to love Ora Pinsent? A flash of kindliness lit up Ashley's feelings towards him; a pang of sympathy went near to making him sorry that Ora had fled from welcoming the home-comer. His eyes rested on Jack with a friendly look; Jack responded with a doubtful wavering smile; he seemed to ask whether he could in truth rely on the new benevolence which he saw in his host's eyes. Ashley smiled, half at his own queer thoughts, half to encourage the poor man. The smile nourished Jack's growing confidence; with a roguish air which had not been visible before he held out the picture to Ashley, saying,

"Pretty girl, isn't she?"

With a stare Ashley took the portrait. It could not be Ora's, if he spoke of it like that; so it seemed to the lover who translated another's feelings into his own. In an instant he retracted; that was how Jack Fenning would speak of Ora; short-lived kindliness died away; the man was frankly intolerable. But the sight of the picture sent his mind off in another direction. The picture was not Ora's, unless in previous days Ora had been of large figure, of bold feature, of self-assertive aspect, given to hats outrageous, and to signing herself, "Yours ever, Daisy." For such were the salient characteristics of the picture which Mr. Jack Fenning had brought home with him. A perverse freak of malicious memory carried Ashley back to the room in the little house at Chelsea, where his own portrait stood in its silver frame on the small table by Ora's favourite seat. Mutato nomine, de te! But, lord, what a difference the name makes!

"Very pretty," he remarked, handing back the image which had occasioned his thought. "Some one you know on the other side?"

"Yes," said Jack, standing the picture up against the wall.

Ashley was absurdly desirous of questioning him, of learning more about Daisy, of discovering whether Mr. Fenning had his romance or merely meditated in tranquillity on a pleasant friendship. But he held himself back; he would not be more mixed up with the man than fate and Ora Pinsent had commanded. There was something squalid about the man, so that he seemed to infect what he touched with his own flabby meanness. How in the world had Ora come to make him her husband? No doubt five years of whiskey, in society of which Daisy was probably too favourable a specimen to be typical, would account for much. He need not have been repulsive always; he might even have had a fawning attractiveness; it hung oddly about him still. But how could he ever have commanded love? Love asks more, some material out of which to fashion an ideal, some nobility actual or potential. At this point his reflections were very much in harmony with the views of Alice Muddock. He hated to think what Ora had been to this man; now he thanked God that she had run away. He would have liked himself to run away somewhere, never to see Jack Fenning, to forget that he had ever seen him, to rid Ora of every association with him. It was odious that the thought of her must bring the thought of Fenning; how soon would he be able to think of her again without this man shouldering his way into recollection by her side? Until he could achieve that, she herself, suffering an indignity, almost seemed to suffer a taint.

"Good-night," said he. "We'll have a talk in the morning about what's to be done."

"Good-night, Mr. Mead. I'm – I'm awfully obliged to you for everything."

"Not at all," said Ashley. He moved towards the door. As he passed the table his eye fell on Jack's flask, which lay there. For an instant he thought of cautioning Jack against an excessive use of it; but where was the good and why was it his business? Without more he left his unwelcome guest to himself.

And Jack, being thus left alone, had some more whiskey, another look at his picture, and another smoke of his pipe. After that he began to consider how very hardly his wife had used him. Or, rather, he tried to take up and maintain this position, but he failed. He was so genuinely relieved that Ora had not been there; he did not want to meet Ora; he knew that he would be terribly uncomfortable. Why had he come? He wandered up to the mantel-piece again and looked with pathetic reproach at the picture and the signature below it.

"I wish she hadn't made me!" he groaned as he turned away and began to undress himself.

Ora had allowed him to come, but it could hardly be said that she had made him. Moreover his protest seemed to be addressed to the picture on the mantel-piece.