and he smiled at her as he might
have smiled at a young school-girl. If only those wide braids under the
little cap had been hanging over her shoulders the manner would have
been justified. As it was, Gregory felt with some bewilderment that his
behaviour was hardly normal. He was not in the habit of offering
magazines and sweets to young women. But his solicitude expressed itself
in these unconventional forms and luckily she found nothing amiss with
them. She was accustomed, no doubt, to a world where such offerings
passed freely.

"It is very kind of you," said Miss Woodruff. "I should indeed like to
see a review now and then. Mr. Drew is writing another little article on
my guardian, in one of this month's reviews, I did not hear which one;
and I would like to see that very much. But sweets? No; when I like them
I like them too much and eat too many and then I am sorry. Please don't
send me sweets." She was smiling.

"What do you like to eat, then, that doesn't make you sorry--even when
you eat a great deal?"

"Roast-beef!" she said, laughing, and the tip of her tongue was caught
between her teeth. He was charmed to feel that, for the moment, at
least, he had won her from her sadness.

"But you get roast-beef in Cornwall."

"Oh, excellent. I will not have roast-beef, please."

"Fruit, then? You like fruit?"

"Yes; indeed."

"And you don't get much fruit in Cornwall in winter."

"Only apples," she confessed, "and dried apricots."

He elicited from her that nectarines and grapes were her favourite
fruits. But in the midst of their talk she became suddenly grave again.

"I do not believe that you had a single word with her after I came!"

His face betrayed his bewilderment.

"Tante," she enlightened him. "But before then? You did speak with her?
She had sent you to look for me?" The depths of her misconception as to
his presence were apparent.

"No; it was by chance I saw you," he said. "And I didn't have any talk
with Madame von Marwitz." He had no time to undeceive her further if it
had been worth while to undeceive her, for Mrs. Forrester, detaching
herself from the larger group of bereaved ones, joined them.

"I can't give you a lift, Gregory?" she asked. "You are going citywards?
We are all feeling very bleak and despoiled, aren't we? What an awful
place a station is when someone has gone away from it."

"Mrs. Forrester," said Karen Woodruff, with wide eyes, "he did not have
one single word with