there are two special heart cure places, Nauheim and Spa, and to
reach both of these baths from England if in order to ensure a
short sea passage, you come by Calais--you have to make the
connection at Brussels. And the Belgian train never waits by so
much the shade of a second for the one coming from Calais or
from Paris. And even if the French train, are just on time, you
have to run--imagine a heart patient running! --along the
unfamiliar ways of the Brussels station and to scramble up the
high steps of the moving train. Or, if you miss connection, you
have to wait five or six hours. . . . I used to keep awake whole
nights cursing that abuse. My wife used to run--she never, in
whatever else she may have misled me, tried to give me the
impression that she was not a gallant soul. But, once in the
German Express, she would lean back, with one hand to her side
and her eyes closed. Well, she was a good actress. And I would be
in hell. In hell, I tell you. For in Florence I had at once a wife and
an unattained mistress--that is what it comes to--and in the
retaining of her in this world I had my occupation, my career, my
ambition. It is not often that these things are united in one body.
Leonora was a good actress too. By Jove she was good! I tell you,
she would listen to me by the hour, evolving my plans for a
shock-proof world. It is true that, at times, I used to notice about
her an air of inattention as if she were listening, a mother, to the
child at her knee, or as if, precisely, I were myself the patient.

You understand that there was nothing the matter with Edward
Ashburnham's heart--that he had thrown up his commission and
had left India and come half the world over in order to follow a
woman who had really had a "heart" to Nauheim. That was the
sort of sentimental ass he was. For, you understand, too, that they