his eye.

"You are quite comfortable?" he began. "Sha'n't I have the Presence in the
buffet make you a cup of tea? That in the diner didn't deserve the name."

She was regarding him with curious anger in the gray eyes, and her reply
quite ignored the kindly offer of refreshment.

"You are the pink of dragomans," she said. "Don't you want to go and
smoke?"

"To be entirely consistent, I suppose I ought to," he confessed, wondering
if his throw had failed. "Do you want me to go?"

"I have been alone all the afternoon: I can endure it a little while
longer, I presume."

Ormsby permitted himself a single heart-throb of exultation. He had
deliberately gone about to break down her poise, her only barrier of
defense, and it began to look as if he had succeeded.

"I couldn't help it, you know," he said, catching his cue swiftly. "There
are times when I'm obliged to keep away from you--times when every fiber
of me rebels against the restraints of the false position you have thrust
me into. When I'm taken that way I don't dare play with the fire."

"I wish I could know how much you mean by that," she said musingly. Deep
down in her heart she knew she was as far as ever from loving this man;
but his love, or the insistent urging of it, was like a strong current
drifting her whither she would not go.

"I mean all that an honest man can mean," he rejoined. "I have fought like
a soldier for standing-room in the place you have assigned me; I have
tried sincerely--and stupidly, you will say--to be merely your friend,
just the best friend you ever had. But it's no use. Coming or going, I
shall always be your lover."

"Please don't," she said, neither coldly nor warmly. "You are getting over
into the domain of the very young people when you say things like that."

It was an unpleasant thing to say, and he was not beyond wincing a little.
None the less, he would not be turned aside.

"You'll overlook it in me if I've pressed the thing too hard on the side
of sentiment, won't you? Apart from the fact that I feel that way, I've
been going on the supposition that you'd like it, if you could only make
up your mind to like me."

"I do like you," she admitted; "more than any one I have ever known, I
think."

The drumming wheels and a long-drawn trumpet blast from the locomotive
made a shield of sound to isolate them. The elderly banker in the opposite
section was nodding over his newspaper; and the newly married ones were
obli