[Pg 28]the kindest thing any one has done for me since I came over.”

[Pg 28]

“Are ye—”

“Irish—same as yourself.”

“How did ye know?”

“Sure, who but an Irishman would have had his wits and his heart working at the same time?” And with a laugh Patsy left him and went inside.

Her eye ran systematically down the rows of seats. Billy Burgeman was not there. She passed through to the next car, and a second, and a third. Still there was no back she could identify as belonging to the man she was pursuing.

She was crossing a fourth platform when she ran into the conductor, who barred her way. “Smoking-car ahead, lady; this is the last of the passenger-coaches.”

Patsy had it on the end of her tongue to say she preferred smoking-cars, intending to duck simultaneously under the conductor’s arm and enter, willy-nilly. But the words rolled no farther than the tongue’s edge. She turned obediently back, re-entering the car and taking the first seat by the door. For this her memory was responsible. It had spun the day’s events before her like a roulette wheel, stopping precisely at the remark of Marjorie Schuyler’s concerning William Burgeman: “He’s the most conventional young [Pg 29]gentleman I ever saw in my life. Why, you would shock—”

[Pg 29]

A strange young woman doling out consolation to him in a smoking-car would be anything but a dramatic success; Patsy felt this all too keenly. He was decidedly not of her world or the men and women she knew, who gave help when the need came regardless of time, place, acquaintanceship, or sex.

“Faith, he’s the kind that will expect an introduction first, and a month or two of tangoing, tea-drinking, and tennis-playing; after which, if I ask his permission, he might consider it proper—” Patsy groaned. “Oh, I hate the man already!”

“Ticket!”

“Ticket? What for?”

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