ntion my ultimate destination."

"Perhaps not. I have dreamt it. But I do not presume to inquire where
you are going, and I myself am certainly not bound for Naples. But if
I can be of no further use to you I will make my bow. It is time for
me to get back to the train, and for my part I don't in the least want
to lose the Engadine express."

She got up too, and walked out of the buffet by my side.

"I shall go on, at any rate as far as Boulogne," she volunteered,
without my asking the question; and we got into our car together, she
entering her compartment and I mine. I heard her door bang, but I kept
mine still open.

I smoked many cigarettes pondering over the curious episode and my new
acquaintance. How was I to class her? A young man would have sworn she
was perfectly straight, that there could be no guile in this
sweet-faced, gentle, well-mannered woman; and I, with my greater
experience of life and the sex, was much tempted to do the same. It
was against the grain to condemn her as all bad, a depredator, a woman
with perverted moral sense who broke the law and did evil things.

But what else could I conclude from the words I had heard drop from
her own lips, strengthened and confirmed as they were by the
incriminating language of her companion?

"Bother the woman and her dark blue eyes. I wish I'd never come across
her. A fine thing, truly, to fall in love with a thief. I hope to
heaven she will really leave the train at Boulogne; we ought to be
getting near there by now."

I had travelled the road often enough to know it by heart, and I
recognized our near approach only to realize that the train did not
mean to stop. I turned over the leaves of Bradshaw and saw I had been
mistaken; the train skirted Boulogne and never entered the station.

"Well, that settles it for the present, anyhow. If she still wants to
leave the train she must wait now until Amiens. That ought to suit her
just as well."

But it would not; at least, she lost no time in expressing her
disappointment at not being able to alight at Boulogne.

We had hardly passed the place when her maid's (or companion's) square
figure filled the open doorway of my compartment, and in her strong
deep voice she addressed a brief summons to me brusquely and
peremptorily:

"My lady wishes to speak to you."

"And pray what does 'my lady' want with me?" I replied carelessly,
using the expression as a title of rank.

"She is not 'my lady,' but 'my'