f-written resignation and
began to smite things in order for the flight. Could he make Number Three?
Since that was the train named in Penelope's message, nothing short of a
catastrophe should prevent his making it.

He did make it, with an hour to spare; an hour which he proceeded to turn
into a time of sharp trial for the patient telegraph operator at the
station, with his badgerings of the man for news of Number Three. The
train reported--he took it as a special miracle wrought in his behalf that
the Flyer was for this once abreast of her schedule--he fell to tramping
up and down the long platform, deep in anticipative prefigurings. The
mills of the years grind many grists besides the trickling stream of the
hours: would he find Miss Brentwood as he had left her? Could he be sure
of meeting her on the frank, friendly footing of the Croydon summer? He
feared not; feared all things--lover-like.

He hoped there would be no absence-reared barrier to be painfully leveled.
A man among men, a leader in some sort, and in battle a soldier who could
hew his way painstakingly, if not dramatically, to his end, David Kent was
no carpet knight, and he knew his lack. Would Elinor make things easy for
him, as she used to daily in the somewhat difficult social atmosphere of
the exclusive summer hotel?

Measuring it out in all its despairing length and breadth after the fact,
he was deeply grateful to Penelope. Missing her ready help at the moment
of cataclysms when he entered the sleeping-car, he might have betrayed
himself. His first glance lighted on Elinor and Ormsby, and he needed no
gloss on the love-text. He had delayed too long; had asked too much of the
Fates, and Atropos, the scissors-bearing sister, had snipped his thread of
hope.

It is one of the consequences of civilization that we are denied the
privilege of unmasking at the behest of the elemental emotions; that we
are constrained to bleed decorously. Making shift to lean heavily on
Penelope, Kent came through without doing or saying anything unseemly.
Mrs. Brentwood, who had been sleeping with one eye open, and that eye upon
Elinor and Ormsby, made sure that she had now no special reason to be
ungracious to David Kent. For the others, Ormsby was good-naturedly suave;
Elinor was by turns unwontedly kind and curiously silent; and
Penelope--but, as we say, it was to Penelope that Kent owed most.

So it came about that the outcome of the cataclysm was a thing which
h