Forgive me, my pure angel----"

And Frank Barlow's pure angel did forgive him, and with a spontaneity
and generous forgetfulness which he will ever remember. Nay, more;
Agnes--and this touched her husband deeply--even gave up her pleasant
acquaintance with that writing fellow, Ferrier, because Ferrier, through
no fault of his, was associated, in both their minds, with the terrible
time each would have given so much to obliterate from the record of
their otherwise cloudless married life. WHY THEY MARRIED

    "God doeth all things well, though by what strange, solemn, and
     murderous contrivances." I

John Coxeter was sitting with his back to the engine in a first-class
carriage in the Paris-Boulogne night train. Not only Englishman, but
Englishman of a peculiarly definite class, that of the London civil
servant, was written all over his spare, still active figure. It was late September, and the rush homewards had begun; so Coxeter,
being a man of precise and careful habit, had reserved a corner seat. Then, just before the train had started, a certain Mrs. Archdale, a
young widowed lady with whom he was acquainted, had come up to him on
the Paris platform, and to her he had given up his seat. Coxeter had willingly made the little sacrifice of his personal comfort,
but he had felt annoyed when Mrs. Archdale in her turn had yielded the
corner place with foolish altruism to a French lad exchanging vociferous
farewells with his parents. When the train started the boy did not give
the seat back to the courteous Englishwoman to whom it belonged, and
Coxeter, more vexed by the matter than it was worth, would have liked to
punch the boy's head. And yet, as he now looked straight before him, sitting upright in the
carriage which was rocking and jolting as only a French railway carriage
can rock and jolt, he realized that he himself had gained by the lad's
lack of honesty. By having thus given away something which did not
belong to her, Mrs. Archdale was now seated, if uncomfortably hemmed in
and encompassed on each side, just opposite to Coxeter himself. Coxeter was well aware that to stare at a woman is the height of bad
breeding, but unconsciously he drew a great distinction between what is
good taste to do when one is being observed, and that which one does
when no one can catch one doing it. Without making the slightest effort,
in fact by looking straight before him, Nan Archdale fell into his
direct line of vision, and he allowed his eyes to rest on her with an
unwilling sense that there was nothing in the world he had rather they
rested on. Her appearance pleased his fastidious, rather old-fashioned
taste. Mrs. Archdale was wearing a long grey cloak. On her head was
poised a dark hat trimmed with Mercury wings; it rested lightly on the
pale golden hair which formed so agreeable a contrast to her deep blue
eyes. Coxeter did not believe in luck; the word which means so much to many
men had no place in his vocabulary, or even in his imagination. But,
still, the sudden appearance of Mrs. Archdale in the great Paris station
had been an agreeable surprise, one of those incidents which, just
because of their unexpectedness, make a man feel not only pleased with
himself, but at one with the world. Before Mrs. Archdale had come up to the carriage door at which he was
standing, several things had contributed to put Coxeter in an
ill-humour. It had seemed to his critical British phlegm that he was surrounded,
immersed against his will, in floods of emotion. Among his fellow
travellers the French element predominated. Heavens! how they
talked--jabbered would be the better word--laughed and cried! How they
hugged and embraced one another! Coxeter thanked God he was an
Englishman. His feeling of bored disgust was intensified by the conduct of a
long-nosed, sallow man, who had put his luggage into the same carriage
as that where Coxeter's seat had been reserved. Strange how the peculiar characteristics common to the Jewish race
survive, whatever be the accident of nationality. This man also was
saying good-bye, his wife being a dark, thin, eager-looking woman of a
very common French type. Coxeter looked at them critically, he wondered
idly if the woman was Jewish too. On the whole he thought not. She was
half crying, half laughing, her hands now clasping her husband's arm,
now travelling, with a gesture of tenderness, up to his fleshy face,
while he seemed to tolerate rather than respond to her endearments and
extravagant terms of affection. "_Adieu, mon petit homme adoré!_" she
finally exclaimed, just as the tickets were being examined, and to
Coxeter's surprise the adored one answered in a very English voice,
albeit the utterance was slightly thick, "There, there! That'ull do, my
dear girl. It's only for a fortnight after all." Coxeter felt a pang of sincere pity for the poor fellow; a cad, no
doubt--but an English cad, cursed with an emotional French wife! Then his attention had been most happily diverted by the unexpected
appearance of Mrs. Archdale. She had come up behind him very quietly,
and he had heard her speak before actually seeing her. "Mr. Coxeter, are
you going back to England, or have you only come to see someone off?" Not even then had Coxeter--to use a phrase which he himself would not
have used, for he avoided the use of slang--"given himself away." Over
his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had
still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been
looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into the
compartment, as he indicated to her the comfortable seat he had reserved
for himself, not even she--noted though she was for her powers of
sympathy and understanding--had divined the delicious tremor, the
curious state of mingled joy and discomfort into which her sudden
presence had thrown the man whom she had greeted a little doubtfully, by
no means sure that he would welcome her companionship on a long journey. And, indeed, in spite of the effect she produced upon him, in spite of
the fact that she was the only human being who had ever had, or was ever
likely to have, the power of making him feel humble, not quite satisfied
with himself--Coxeter disapproved of Mrs. Archdale. At the present
moment he disapproved of her rather more than usual, for if she meant
to give up that corner seat, why had she not so arranged as to sit by
him? Instead, she was now talking to the French boy who occupied what
should have been her seat. But Nan Archdale, as all her friends called her, was always like that. Coxeter never saw her, never met her at the houses to which he went
simply in order that he might meet her, without wondering why she wasted
so much of the time she might have spent in talking to him, and above
all in listening to him, in talking and listening to other people.