exhaustion. The train rumbled on. Each time it stopped Patsy watched the doorway and the window beside her for sight of her quarry; each time it started again she sighed inwardly with relief, glad of another furlough from a mission which was fast growing appalling. She had long since ceased to be interested in Billy Burgeman as an individual. He had shrunk into an abstract sense of duty, and as such failed to appeal or convince. But as her interest waned, her determination waxed; she would get him and tell him what she had come for, if it took a year and a day and shocked him into complete oblivion. She was saying this to herself for the hundredth time, adding for spice—and artistic finish—“After that—the devil take him!” when the train pulled away from another station. She had already satisfied [Pg 32]herself that he was not among the leaving passengers. But suddenly something familiar in a solitary figure standing at the far end of the gravel embankment caught her eye; it was back toward her, and in the quick passing and the gathering dusk she could make out dim outlines only. But those outlines were unmistakable, unforgetable. [Pg 32] “A million curses on the house of Burgeman!” quoth Patsy. “Well, there’s naught for it but to get off at the next station and go back.” The conductor watched her get off with a distinct feeling of relief. He had very much feared she was not a responsible person and in no mental position to be traveling alone. Her departure cleared him of all uneasiness and obligation and he settled down to his business with an unburdened mind. Not so Patsy. She blinked at the vanishing train and then at her empty hands, with the nearest she had ever come in her life to utter, abject despair. She had left her bag in the car! When articulate thinking was possible she remarked, acridly, “Ye need a baby nurse to mind ye, Patricia O’Connell; and I’m not sure but ye need a perambulator as well.” She gave a tired little stretch to her body and rubbed her eyes. “I feel as if this was all a silly play and I was cast for the part of an Irish simpleton; a low-comedy [Pg 33]burlesque—that ye’d swear never happened in real life outside of the county asylums.” [Pg 33] A headlight raced down the track toward her and the city, and she gathered up what was left of her scattered wits. As the train slowed up she stepped into the shadows, and her eye fell on the open
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