oney of her own to pay for it, for she had refused to wait at
the station while the officer fished in the obscurities of his purse.
The bag, into which a menial had crammed a kit probably scattered
about the bedroom, arrived unfastened. Once more at the station, she
gave the cabman all the change which she had received at the hotel
counter. By a miracle she made a porter understand what was needed and
how urgently it was needed. He said the train was just going, and ran.
She ran after him. The ticket-collector at the platform gate allowed
the porter to pass, but raised an implacable arm to prevent her from
following. She had no platform ticket, and she could not possibly be
travelling by the train. Then she descried her officer standing at an
open carriage door in conversation with another officer and tapping
his leggings with his cane. How aristocratic and disdainful and
self-absorbed the pair looked! They existed in a world utterly
different from hers. They were the triumphant and negligent males.
She endeavoured to direct the porter with her pointing hand, and then,
hysterical again, she screamed out the one identifying word she knew:
"Edgar!"

It was lost in the resounding echoes of the immense vault. Edgar
certainly did not hear it. But he caught the great black initials,
"E.W." on the kit-bag as the porter staggered along, and stopped the
aimless man, and the kit-bag was thrown into the apartment. Doors were
now banging. Christine saw Edgar take out his purse and fumble at it.
But Edgar's companion pushed Edgar into the train and himself gave a
tip which caused the porter to salute extravagantly. The porter, at
any rate, had been rewarded. Christine began to cry, not from chagrin,
but with relief. Women on the platform waved absurd little white
handkerchiefs. Heads and khaki shoulders stuck out of the carriage
windows of the shut train. A small green flag waved; arms waved like
semaphores. The train ought to have been gliding away, but something
delayed it, and it was held as if spellbound under the high, dim
semicircle of black glass, amid the noises of steam, the hissing of
electric globes, the horrible rattle of luggage trucks, the patter of
feet, and the vast, murmuring gloom. Christine saw Edgar leaning from
a window and gazing anxiously about. The little handkerchiefs were
still courageously waving, and she, too, waved a little wisp. But he
did not see her; he was not looking in the right place for her.

S