opened her mouth, and, for a short time, all other noises were drowned
in a fine, full volume of voice.

On their sofa, Madeleine and Maurlee sat in silence, pretending to
listen to Dove, who was narrating his journey. Madeleine was out of
humour; she tapped the floor, and had a crease in her forehead. As for
Maurice, he was in such poor spirits that she could not but observe
it.

"Why are you so quiet? Is anything the matter?"

He shook his head, without speaking. His vague sense of impending
misfortune had crystallised into a definite thought; he knew now what
it signified. If Schilsky went away from Leipzig, Louise would
probably go, too, and that would be the end of everything.

"I represented to him," he heard Dove saying, "that I had seen the
luggage with my own eyes at Flushing. What do you think he answered?
He looked me up and down, and said: 'ICH WERDE TELEGRAPHIEREN UND
ERKUNDIGUNGEN EINZIEHEN.' Now, do you think if you said to an English
station-master: 'Sir, I saw the luggage with my own eyes,' he would
not believe you? No, in my opinion, the whole German railway-system
needs revision. Would you believe it, we did not make fifty kilometers
in the hour, and yet our engine broke down before Magdeburg?"

So this would be the end; the end of foolish dreams and weak
hopes, which he had never put into words even to himself, which had
never properly existed, and yet had been there, nevertheless, a mass
of gloriously vague perhapses. The end was at hand--an end before there
had been any beginning.