g. He looks sulkier than I've ever seen any one--sulkier than
I've ever dreamed possible. Pig----"

Through the week, painting at the school and black and white work in the
evenings filled Nina's mind to the exclusion even of strangers who
might, in more leisured moments, seem worthy of observation. She was
aware of the sulky one on platforms, of course, but talking about him to
Molly was more amusing somehow than merely thinking of him. When it came
to thinking, the real, the earnest things of life--the Sketch Club, the
chance of the Melville Nettleship Prize, the intricate hideousness of
bones and muscles--took the field and kept it, against strangers and
acquaintances alike.

Saturday, turning this week's scribbled page to the fair, clear page of
next week, brought the stranger back to her thoughts, and to eyes now
not obscured by close realities.

He passed her on the platform, with a dozen bunches of violets in his
hands.

Outside, on the railway bridge, the red and green lamps glowed dully
through deep floods of yellow fog. The platform was crowded, the train
late. When at last it steamed slowly in, the crowd surged towards it.
The third-class carriages were filled in the moment. Nina hurried along
the platform peering into the second-class carriages. Full also.

Then the guard opened the way for her into the blue-cloth Paradise of a
first-class carriage; and, just as the train gave the shudder of disgust
which heralds its shame-faced reluctant departure, the door opened
again, and the guard pushed in another traveller--the "stranger who
might----" of course. The door banged, the train moved off with an air
of brisk determination. A hundred yards from the platform it stopped
dead.

There were no other travellers in that carriage. When the train had
stood still for ten minutes or so, the stranger got up and put his head
out of the window. At that instant the train decided to move again. It
did it suddenly, and, exhausted by the effort, stopped after half a
dozen yards' progress with so powerful a turn of the brake that the
stranger was flung sideways against Nina, and his elbow nearly knocked
her hat off.

He raised his own apologetically--but he did not speak even then.

"The wretch!" said Nina hotly; "he might at least have begged my
pardon."

The stranger sat down again, and began to read the _Spectator_. Nina had
no papers. The train moved on an inch or two, and the reddening yellow
of the fog seeme