This illusion was so strong for some moments that he jumped
up and went out into the corridor, to look down at the permanent way
on that side also. The lamplight from the train showed on both sides
that the sleepers, the chairs, the gravel, slipped and slid in the
correct direction. The train was flying, simply flying along the inner
up-track of the four sets of metals.
"I mustn't be so fullish," he kept saying to himself. "I'm all safe
now."
A sudden noise of voices drew him to the corridor; and he stood
holding a hand-rail, watching the leather walls and the gangway that
led into the next coach leap and dance and bob and sink, while he
listened eagerly. The roar of the train was so great here that he
could not catch what the hidden men were saying, but he understood
that they were sailors making too much noise and a railway guard
rebuking them. "It's nothing to do with me," he said to himself. "Why
_am_ I so fullish?"
He returned to the compartment, sat with his shoulder to the corridor,
and brooded dully and heavily. All that fiery trouble about Mavis and
her being dishonored had gone out of his mind as if forever; the
grievance and the rage and the hatred had gone too; temporarily there
was nothing but a most ponderous self-pity.
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