ne before it could be seized.

And then, suddenly, they were face to face. He was on his way from the
luncheon-car to the compartment he shared with two or three men at the
other end of the train. She was standing in the corridor, looking out at
the vaporous English landscape. Through the mists overlying the flat
fields and distant parks trees loomed weirdly, the elms and beeches in
full leaf, the oaks just tinged with green. Cottony white clouds drifted
overhead; the sun was dimly visible. Now and then a line of hedge was
white, or pink and white, with the bursting may.

He didn't recognize the lady who barred his way along the narrow
passage. As she stood with one arm on the brass rail that crossed the
window he could see an ungloved hand; but it might have been any hand.
She wore a long brown coat, rather shapeless, reaching to the hem of her
dress, while a large hat, about which a green veil looped and drooped
irregularly, entirely concealing the head, helped to make her, as he
stood waiting for her to move, a mere feminine figure without
personality.

It was the sense that some one desired to pass that caused her to turn
slightly, glancing up at him sidewise. Even so, he couldn't see all of
her face--not much more than the forehead and the eyes. But the eyes
seemed to come alive as he looked down into them, like sapphires under
slowly growing light. When she turned, her movements had the
deliberation of bewilderment. She might have been just wakened in a
place she didn't know.

"Chip!" There was another half-minute of incredulous gazing before she
said anything more. "What are you doing here?"

He felt the necessity of explaining his presence. "I was on the boat. I
didn't know--"

"That I was on it, too?"

"I--I did know that," he stammered, "after we sailed. Not before. It was
the name in the list--"

"But I never saw you. There weren't many passengers. I was always on
deck."

Her distress betrayed itself in the trembling of her voice, in the
shifting of her color, and in the beating of the ungloved hand upon the
gloved one.

He felt his own confusion passing. It was so natural to be with her, so
right. His voice grew steadier as he said:

"I didn't go about very much. I was afraid--"

She nodded, speaking hastily. "I understand. It was kind of you. And
you're--alone?"

He cursed himself for coloring, but he couldn't help it. He had a wife
and child in New York! He saw that she wanted to recogniz