and then, striking a match, lit the paper and
watched it burn in the grate.

CHAPTER II

THE GIRL WHO CRIED

The northern express had deposited its passengers at King's Cross on
time. All the station approaches were crowded with hurrying passengers.
Taxicabs and "growlers" were mixed in apparently inextricable confusion.
There was a roaring babble of instruction and counter-instruction from
police-men, from cab drivers, and from excited porters. Some of the
passengers hurried swiftly across the broad asphalt space and
disappeared down the stairs toward the underground station. Others
waited for unpunctual friends with protesting and frequent examination
of their watches.

One alone seemed wholly bewildered by the noise and commotion. She was a
young girl not more than eighteen, and she struggled with two or three
brown paper parcels, a hat-box, and a bulky hand-bag. She was among
those who expected to be met at the station, for she looked helplessly
at the clock and wandered from one side of the building to the other
till at last she came to a standstill in the center, put down all her
parcels carefully, and, taking a letter from a shabby little bag, opened
it and read.

Evidently she saw something which she had not noticed before, for she
hastily replaced the letter in the bag, scrambled together her parcels,
and walked swiftly out of the station. Again she came to a halt and
looked round the darkened courtyard.

"Here!" snapped a voice irritably. She saw a door of a taxicab open, and
came toward it timidly.

"Come in, come in, for heaven's sake!" said the voice.

She put in her parcels and stepped into the cab. The owner of the voice
closed the door with a bang, and the taxi moved on.

"I've been waiting here ten minutes," said the man in the cab.

"I'm so sorry, dear, but I didn't read--"

"Of course you didn't read," interrupted the other brusquely.

It was the voice of a young man not in the best of tempers, and the
girl, folding her hands in her lap, prepared for the tirade which she
knew was to follow her act of omission.

"You never seem to be able to do anything right," said the man. "I
suppose it is your natural stupidity."

"Why couldn't you meet me inside the station?" she asked with some show
of spirit.

"I've told you a dozen times that I don't want to be seen with you,"
said the man brutally. "I've had enough trouble over you already. I wish
to Heaven I'd never met you."

Th