It was true that the life they had plunged into would have its dash and whirl.

But it would be the dash of a moment, and the whirl of a second.

Then, as it always must be, there would come the long interval of flight and concealment, the wearying stretch of inactivity.

He felt, as he gazed out the car window and saw town and village and hamlet left behind them, that the same wave of excitement that cast him up would forever in turn drag him down--and it all resulted, he told himself, in his passing distemper of fatigue and anxiety, in a little further abrasion, in a little sterner denudation of their tortured souls! It was at Ventimiglia that the _capostazione_ himself appeared at the door of their compartment, accompanied by a uniformed official.

The two fugitives, with their hearts in their mouths, leaned back on their cushions with assumed unconcern, cooing and chattering hand in hand among their flowers, while a volley of quick and angry questions, in Italian, was flung in at them from the opened compartment door.