,
stumbling to my feet, walked up and down the compartment until my
cramped muscles were relieved. Then I sat down again, and, lighting a
cigar, puffed great rings and clouds of fragrant smoke across the
aisle.

"The train was flying; the cars lurched and shook, and the windows
rattled accompaniment to the creaking panels. The smoke from my cigar
dimmed the lamp in the ceiling and hid the opposite seat from view.
How it curled and writhed in the corners, now eddying upward, now
floating across the aisle like a veil! I lounged back in my cushioned
seat, watching it with interest. What queer shapes it took! How thick
it was becoming!--how strangely luminous! Now it had filled the whole
compartment, puff after puff crowding upward, waving, wavering,
clouding the windows, and blotting the lamp from sight. It was most
interesting. I had never before smoked such a cigar. What an
extraordinary brand! I examined the end, flicking the ashes away. The
cigar was out. Fumbling for a match to relight it, my eyes fell on the
drifting smoke-curtain which swayed across the corner opposite. It
seemed almost tangible. How like a real curtain it hung, gray,
impenetrable! A man might hide behind it. Then an idea came into my
head, and it persisted until my uneasiness amounted to a vague terror.
I tried to fight it off--I strove to resist--but the conviction slowly
settled upon me that something was behind that smoke-veil--something
which had entered the compartment while I slept.

"'It can't be,' I muttered, my eyes fixed on the misty drapery; 'the
train has not stopped.'

"The car creaked and trembled. I sprang to my feet and swept my arm
through the veil of smoke. Then my hair rose on my head. For my hand
touched another hand, and my eyes had met two other eyes.

"I heard a voice in the gloom, low and sweet, calling me by name; I
saw the eyes again, tender and blue; soft fingers touched my own.

"'Are you afraid?' she said.

"My heart began to beat again, and my face warmed with returning
blood.

"'It is only I,' she said, gently.

"I seemed to hear my own voice speaking as if at a great distance,
'You here--alone?'

"'How cruel of you!' she faltered; 'I am not alone.' At the same
instant my eyes fell upon the professor, calmly seated by the farther
window. His hands were thrust into the folds of a corded and tasselled
dressing-gown, from beneath which peeped two enormous feet encased in
carpet slippers. Upon his head towere