"I'm afraid
you are all done out."

He drew me to our chair and we sat down together. I found myself
crying, something I almost never do. Dicky smoothed my hair tenderly,
silently, until I wiped my eyes. Then his clasp tightened around me.

"Tonight has taught me a lesson," he said. "Sometimes I have dreamed
of a little child of our own, Madge. But I would rather never have a
child than go through the suffering those poor devils had tonight. It
must be awful to lose a baby."

I hid my face in his shoulder. Not even to my husband could I confess
just then how the touch of the naked, rigid little body of that other
woman's child had sent a thrill of longing through me for a baby's
hands that should be mine.

IX

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

"Well, we are in plenty of time."

We were seated, Dicky and I, in the waiting room of the Long Island
railroad a week after my dinner party that had almost ended in
tragedy. Dicky had bought our tickets to Marvin, the little village
which was to be the starting point of our country ramble, and we were
putting in the time before our train was ready in gazing at the usual
morning scene in a railroad station.

There were not many passengers going out on the island, but scores
of commuters were hurrying through the station on their way to their
offices and other places of employment.

"You don't see many of the commuters up here," Dicky remarked. "There's
a passage direct from the trains to the subway on the lower level, and
most of them take that. Some of the women come up to prink a bit in
the waiting room, and some of the men come through here to get cigars
or papers, but the big crowd is down on the train level."

I hardly heard him, for I was so interested in a girl who had just
come into the waiting room. I had never seen so self-possessed a
creature in my life. She was unusually beautiful, with golden hair
that was so real the most captious person could not suspect that hair
of being dyed. Her eyes were dark, and the unusual combination of eyes
and hair fitted a face with regular features and a fair skin. I had
seen Christmas and Easter cards with faces like hers. But I had never
seen anyone like her in real life, and I am afraid I stared at her as
hard as did everyone else in the waiting room.

"By jove!" Dicky drew in a deep breath. "Isn't she the most ripping
beauty you ever saw?"

His eyes were following her lithe, perfect figure as she walked down
the waiti