There, I have told you! You must go to my father and ask him for the
truth!"
He was silent for a moment. It was a strange thing to hear.
"If this is true," he said, "it is freedom."
"Freedom," she repeated, and glided away from him whilst he stood there
dreaming.
CHAPTER III
THE MAN WHO WAS IN A HURRY
He lay back in a corner seat of the carriage, panting, white-faced,
exhausted. His clumsy boots, studded with nails, were wet, and his
frayed black trousers were splashed with mud. In his eyes was the light
of vivid fear, his delicate mouth was twitching still with excitement.
In his ears there rang yet the angry cry of the guard, the shouting of
porters, the excitement of that leap through the hastily-opened carriage
door tingled yet in his veins. Before his eyes there was a mist. He
was conscious indeed that the carriage which he had marked out as being
empty was tenanted by a single person, but he had not even glanced
across towards the occupied seat. What mattered it so long as they were
off? Already the fields seemed flying past the window, and the
telegraph posts had commenced their frantic race. Ten, twenty, forty
miles an hour at least-off on that wonderful run, the pride of the
directors and the despair of rival companies.
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