the private car. His back was
turned upon it, and he was glooming out across the bare hills, with his
square jaw set as if the ignoring effort were painful.

"I'm going back to Angels with the president," said the superintendent,
speaking to both of them. "You can clean up here without me."

The trainmaster nodded, but Dawson seemed not to have heard. At all
events, he made no sign. Lidgerwood turned and ascended the embankment,
only to have the sudden reluctance assail him again as he put his foot
on the truck of the _Nadia_ to mount to the platform. The hesitation was
only momentary, this time. Other guests Mr. Brewster might have, without
including the one person whom he would circle the globe to avoid.

"Good boy!" said the president, when Lidgerwood swung over the high
hand-rail and leaned out to give Williams the starting signal. And when
the scene of the wreck was withdrawing into the rearward distance, the
president felt for the door-knob, saying: "Let's go inside, where we
shan't be obliged to see so much of this God-forsaken country at one
time."

One half-minute later the superintendent would have given much to be
safely back with McCloskey and Dawson at the vanishing curve of
scrap-heaps. In that half-minute Mr. Brewster had opened the car door,
and Lidgerwood had followed him across the threshold.

The comfortable lounging-room of the _Nadia_ was not empty; nor was it
peopled by a group of Mr. Brewster's associates in the copper combine,
the alternative upon which Lidgerwood had hopefully hung the "we's" and
the "us's."

Seated on a wicker divan drawn out to face one of the wide side-windows
were two young women, with a curly-headed, clean-faced young man between
them. A little farther along, a rather austere lady, whose pose was of
calm superiority to her surroundings, looked up from her magazine to
say, as her husband had said: "Why, Howard! are you here?" Just beyond
the austere lady, and dozing in his chair, was a white-haired man whose
strongly marked features proclaimed him the father of one of the young
women on the divan.

And in the farthest corner of the open compartment, facing each other
companionably in an "S"-shaped double chair, were two other young
people--a man and a woman.... Truly, the heavens had fallen! For the
young woman filling half of the _tete-a-tete_ chair was that one person
whom Lidgerwood would have circled the globe to avoid meeting.

XIII

BITTER-SWEET

T