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framing themselves in the window, and after meeting her eyes and thinking the matter well out, deciding against her. She was at last risked, however, by an old lady with a suitcase, who took the corner seat farthest away from her, and sat up perkily and spent her time in arduously not looking at her. The spell being now broken, there entered another old lady — which at once caused Jackie and the first old lady, who were previously divided, to unite in critical glances and mild resentment against the suitcases, fussings, and general appearance and character of the second old lady — such being the normally inimical nature of railway relationships. Then, two minutes afterwards, the three of them forgot old differences in a common cause against yet another new-comer, who was a young girl of not more than sixteen, dressed in black from head to foot, and carrying a basket containing a kitten. She bore a bereaved look, and for some reason did not take a corner seat. There then entered a well-dressed young man, who sat directly opposite Jackie.
    This young man entered with great decision, did not look at anybody, snatched a book out of his attaché-case, on which were engraven the initials R. G., and commenced at once to read. He had dominated the compartment, and entered Jackie’s life, and was reading unconcernedly, before any of them had time to mobilize their critical forces against him. On second thoughts, this young man was not a young man, Jackie decided, but nevertheless he was nothing else: for not by any stretch of the imagination could he be styledan old man, or even a middle-aged man, so what were you to do? Perhaps you could only say that he was no longer a boy — no longer a youth — for he had the air of brown virility and reserved strength which is impossible of acquisition until past the actual prime of life. Thirty-six, thought Jackie, and a lot of sorrow at that. Not trouble, or worry, but sorrow was the word Jackie fixed upon; and by this dramatization she betrayed, if she knew it, something of her quickly awakening interest in him. In fact she at last awarded him a Great Sorrow, in the singular, and the greater the sorrow the more she fancied him. This was rather the type of young man who would Go out into the Night, thought Jackie. He would fix up the whole affair for the happy couple, and go out into the night. She was, alas, reading his character ill. For although her railway companion had doubtless been out into his Night with the best, in his day, a keener observer would have recognized that that was not his line nowadays.
    His face was the most interesting face she had ever seen; and it was unique in this, that it was attractive without giving the slightest offence by its attractiveness. You did not understand, at a first glance, that you were looking at anything out of the way; it was only slowly that you observed , with a feeling of personal and exclusive discovery, that there was a great deal more to it than anyone but you would imagine. Jackie was convinced that she alone could see the extreme charm of this face, and she had a desire to defend its beauty against a world of disparagers. And here again Jackie was as much in error over his powers of attraction as she had been over his dramatic self-negations — as time was to show.
    With ruminations of this kind Jackie, who had brought no book or paper, spun out the time before the train started. She also looked about her at her other fellow-travellers. No one else having entered to rearrange the present clash and interchange of personality amongst these, a state of mutual tolerance, almost amicability, obtained. The status of each was clearly defined. Jackie, having been the first to arrive,had the prestige, as it were, of a pioneer and oldest settler, and so might have been regarded as the genius, the familiar spirit of the compartment. The two old ladies, as successful marauders, had an equal and solid standing of their own. The young girl in