He did make it, with an hour to spare; an hour which he proceeded to turn into a time of sharp trial for the patient telegraph operator at the station, with his badgerings of the man for news of Number Three.  The train reported—­he took it as a special miracle wrought in his behalf that the Flyer was for this once abreast of her schedule—­he fell to tramping up and down the long platform, deep in anticipative prefigurings.  The mills of the years grind many grists besides the trickling stream of the hours:  would he find Miss Brentwood as he had left her?  Could he be sure of meeting her on the frank, friendly footing of the Croydon summer?  He feared not; feared all things—­lover-like.

He hoped there would be no absence-reared barrier to be painfully leveled.  A man among men, a leader in some sort, and in battle a soldier who could hew his way painstakingly, if not dramatically, to his end, David Kent was no carpet knight, and he knew his lack.  Would Elinor make things easy for him, as she used to daily in the somewhat difficult social atmosphere of the exclusive summer hotel?

Measuring it out in all its despairing length and breadth after the fact, he was deeply grateful to Penelope.  Missing her ready help at the moment of cataclysms when he entered the sleeping-car, he might have betrayed himself.  His first glance lighted on Elinor and Ormsby, and he needed no gloss on the love-text.  He had delayed too long; had asked too much of the Fates, and Atropos, the scissors-bearing sister, had snipped his thread of hope.

It is one of the consequences of civilization that we are denied the privilege of unmasking at the behest of the elemental emotions; that we are constrained to bleed decorously.  Making shift to lean heavily on Penelope, Kent came through without doing or saying anything unseemly.  Mrs. Brentwood, who had been sleeping with one eye open, and that eye upon Elinor and Ormsby, made sure that she had now no special reason to be ungracious to David Kent.  For the others, Ormsby was good-naturedly suave; Elinor was by turns unwontedly kind and curiously silent; and Penelope—­but, as we say, it was to Penelope that Kent owed most.

So it came about that the outcome of the cataclysm was a thing which happens often enough in a conventionalized world.  David Kent, with his tragedy fresh upon him, dropped informally into place as one of the party of five; and of all the others, Penelope alone suspected how hard he was hit.  And when all was said; when the new modus vivendi had been fairly established and the hour grew late, Kent went voluntarily with Ormsby to the smoking-compartment, “to play the string out decently,” as he afterward confessed to Loring.

“I see you know how to get the most comfort out of your tobacco,” said the club-man, when they were companionably settled in the men’s room and Kent produced his pipe and tobacco pouch.  “I prefer the pipe myself, for a steady thing; but at this time of night a light Castilla fits me pretty well.  Try one?” tendering his cigar-case.