no longer to be married. What the devil would
they do with her? Better put a stone about her neck and let her drown at
once. All the world is Christian, but Christian and good Samaritan are
not quite the same."

Shelton looked at the girl, who was sitting motionless, with her hands
crossed on her bag, and a revolt against the unfair ways of life arose
within him.

"Yes," said the young foreigner, as if reading all his thoughts, "what's
called virtue is nearly always only luck." He rolled his eyes as though
to say: "Ah! La, Conventions? Have them by all means--but don't look
like peacocks because you are preserving them; it is but cowardice and
luck, my friends--but cowardice and luck!"

"Look here," said Shelton, "I'll give her my address, and if she wants
to go back to her family she can write to me."

"She'll never go back; she won't have the courage."

Shelton caught the cringing glance of the girl's eyes; in the droop of
her lip there was something sensuous, and the conviction that the young
man's words were true came over him.

"I had better not give them my private address," he thought, glancing
at the faces opposite; and he wrote down the following: "Richard Paramor
Shelton, c/o Paramor and Herring, Lincoln's Inn Fields."

"You're very good, sir. My name is Louis Ferrand; no address at present.
I'll make her understand; she's half stupefied just now."

Shelton returned to the perusal of his paper, too disturbed to read; the
young vagrant's words kept sounding in his ears. He raised his eyes. The
plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on her lap;
it had been recased in its black glove with large white stitching. Her
frowning gaze was fixed on him suspiciously, as if he had outraged her
sense of decency.

"He did n't get anything from me," said the voice of the red-faced man,
ending a talk on tax-gatherers. The train whistled loudly, and Shelton
reverted to his paper. This time he crossed his legs, determined to
enjoy the latest murder; once more he found himself looking at the
vagrant's long-nosed, mocking face. "That fellow," he thought, "has seen
and felt ten times as much as I, although he must be ten years younger."

He turned for distraction to the landscape, with its April clouds, trim
hedgerows, homely coverts. But strange ideas would come, and he was
discontented with himself; the conversation he had had, the personality
of this young foreigner, disturbed him. It was all as thou