ne else
noticed that the hook at the waist of Edith's dress had come unfastened?
Edith was on a train too--going the other way. How strange it all was!
How terrible beyond belief! Just as she neared the junction where she
would meet Stuart and from which they would take the train South
together, the thought came to her that none of the rest of them might
remember always to have water in Terror's drinking pan. When she stepped
from the train she was crying--because Terror might want a drink and
wonder why she was not there to give it to him. He would not
understand--and oh, he would miss her so! Even when Stuart, stepping
from the darkness to meet her, drew her to him, brokenly whispering
passionate, grateful words, she could not stop crying--for Terror, who
would not understand, and who would miss her so! He became the whole
world she knew--loving, needing world, world that would not understand,
and would miss her so!

The woman who, on that train from Denver, had been drawn into this story
which she had once lived was coming now into familiar country. She would
be home within an hour. She had sometimes ridden this far with Deane on
his cases. Her heart began to beat fast. Why, there was the very grove
in which they had that picnic! She could scarcely control the excitement
she felt in beginning to find old things. There was something so strange
in the old things having remained there just the same when she had
passed so completely away from them. Seeing things she knew brought the
past back with a shock. She could hardly get her breath when first she
saw the town. And there was the Lawrences'! Somehow it was unbelievable.
She did not hear the porter speaking to her about being brushed off; she
was peering hungrily from the window, looking through tears at the town
she had not seen since she left it that awful night eleven years before.
She was trembling as she stood on the platform waiting for the slowing
train to come to a stop. There was a moment of wanting to run back in
the car, of feeling she could not get off.

The train had stopped; the porter took her by the arm, thinking by her
faltering that she was slipping. She took her bag from him and stood
there, turned a little away from the station crowd.

Ted Holland had been waiting for that train, he also with fast beating
heart; he too was a little tremulous as he hurried down to the car, far
in the rear, from which passengers were alighting from the long train.