He looked away and, after a moment, seeing nothing further to do, started back to his train.  She turned to take the empty cup, and as she closed the hamper the whistle of the westbound sounded through the gorge.

Tisdale walked on through the observation car to the rear platform and stood looking absently off through an aisle of Alpine firs that, parklike, bordered the track.  It was a long time since the sight of a pretty woman had so quickened his blood.  He had believed that for him this sort of thing was over, and he laughed at himself a little.

The westbound rumbled to a stop on the parallel track, he felt the trucks under him start, and an unaccountable depression came over him; the next moment he heard a soft voice directing the porter behind him, and as unaccountably his heart rose.  The girl came on through the open door and stopped beside him, bracing herself with one hand on the railing, while she waved her handkerchief to the group she had left.  He caught a faint, clean perfume suggesting violets, the wind lifted the end of her veil across his shoulder, and something of her exhilaration was transmitted to the currents in his veins.  “Good-by, Elizabeth,” she called.  “Good-by.  Good-by.”

Some trainmen were getting the injured man aboard the westbound passenger, and the lady who had left the wrecked automobile to go with him sent back a sonorous “Au revoir.”  But Elizabeth, who was hurrying down from the station where she had accomplished her errand, turned in astonishment to look after the speeding eastbound.  Then a rocky knob closed all this from sight.

The girl on the platform turned, and Tisdale moved a little to let her pass.  At the same time the lurching of the car, as it swung to the curve, threw her against him.  It all happened very quickly; he steadied her with his arm, and she drew back in confusion; he raised his hand to his head and, remembering he had left his hat in his seat, a flush shaded through his tan.  Then, “I beg your pardon,” she said and hurried by him through the door.

Tisdale stood smoothing his wind-ruffled hair and watching the receding cliff.  “Her eyes are hazel,” he thought, “with turquoise lights.  I never heard of such a combination, but—­it’s fine.”

A little later, when he went in to take his seat, he found her in the chair across the aisle.  The train was skirting the bluffs of Keechelus then, and she had taken off her coat and hat and sat watching the unfolding lake.  His side glance swept her slender, gray-clad figure to the toe of one trim shoe, braced lightly on her footstool, and returned to her face.  In profile it was a new delight.  One caught the upward curl of her black lashes; the suggestion of a fault in the tip of her high, yet delicately chiseled nose; the piquant curve of her short upper lip; the full contour of the lifted chin.  Her hair, roughened some, was soft and fine and black with bluish tones.