d them."

The older woman sighed, and then smiled quite pleasantly. "I suppose
you are clever. One of my nieces is, and they find her rather a
handful. Will you try one of my sandwiches?"

Olive produced her biscuits and bananas, and they munched together in
amity. After all, an aunt might be worse than stupid, and this one was
quite good-natured, and so kind that her taste in literature might be
excused. There were affectionate farewells at the Paris station, where
she got out with all her accumulation of bags and bundles.

The train rushed on through the woods of Fontainebleau and across wide
plains intersected by poplar-fringed canals. As the evening mists rose
lights began to twinkle in cottage windows, and in the villages the
church bells were ringing the prayer to the Virgin. Olive had laid
aside her book some time since, and now, wearying of the grey twilit
world, she fell asleep.

Jean Avenel, too, had watched the waning of the day from his place in
a smoking first for a while, before he got up and began to prowl
restlessly about the corridors. "She will be so tired if she does not
eat," he said to himself. "They ought not to let a child like that
travel alone. I wonder--" He walked down the corridor again, but this
time he looked into each compartment. He saw three Englishmen and an
American playing whist, Germans eating, and French people sleeping,
and at last he came upon his rose. A small man, mean-featured and
scrubby-haired, was seated opposite to her, and his shining eyes were
fixed upon her face. She had taken off her hat and was holding it on
her lap, and Jean saw that she was clutching at it nervously, and
that she was pale. He understood that it was probably her first
experience of the Italian stare, deliberate, merciless, and
indefinitely prolonged. She flushed as he came forward, and her eyes
were eloquent as they met his. He sat down beside her.

"Please forgive me," he said quietly, "but I can see this man is
annoying you. Shall I glare him out of the place? I can."

"Oh, please do," she answered. "He has frightened me so. He was
talking before you came."

The culprit already looked disconcerted and rather foolish, and now,
as Jean leant forward and seemed about to speak to him, he began to be
frightened. He fidgeted, thrusting his hands in his pockets, looking
out of the window, humming a tune. His ears grew red. He tried to meet
the other man's level gaze and failed. He got up rather hur