"What will you do, Stella?" Luttrell asked gently.

"I think I will go and live in the country," she replied.

"It will be lonely, child."

"There will be ghosts, my dear, to keep me company," she answered with a
wan smile. "People like me always have to be a good deal alone, anyway.
I shall be, of course, lonelier, now that I have no one to play with,"
and the smile vanished from her lips. She flung up her face towards the
skies, letting her grief have its way upon that empty deck.

"So we shall never be together--just you and I--alone again," she said,
forcing herself to realise that unintelligible thing. Her thoughts ran
back over the year--the year of their alliance--and she saw all of its
events flickering vividly before her, as they say drowning people do.
"Oh, Wub, what a cruel mistake you made when you went out of your way to
be kind," she cried, with the tears streaming down her face; and
Luttrell winced.

"Yes, that's true," he admitted remorsefully. "I never dreamed what
would come of it."

"You should have left me alone."

Amongst the flickering pictures of the year the first was the clearest.
A great railway station in the West of England, a train drawn up at the
departure platform, herself with a veil drawn close over her face, half
running, half walking in a pitiful anguish towards the train; and then a
man at her elbow. Harry Luttrell.