Martin Cosgrave sprang from the bench and went to the edge of the platform, staring down the long level road, with its two rails tapering almost together in the distance.  Not a sign of a train.  Would it never come in?  Had anything happened the boat?  He walked up and down with energy, holding the lapel of his coat, saying to himself, “I must not be thinking of things like this.  It is foolishness.  Whatever is to happen will happen, and that’s all about it.  I am quite at ease, quite cool!”

At last it came, steaming and blowing.  Windows were lowered, carriage doors flew open, people ran up and down.  Martin Cosgrave stood a little away, tense, drawn, his eyes sweeping down the people.  Suddenly something shot through him; an old sensation, an old thrill, made his whole being tingle, his mind exult, and then there was the most exquisite relaxation.  How long it was since he felt like this before!  His eyes were burning upon a familiar figure that had come from a carriage, the figure of a girl in a navy blue coat and skirt, her back turned, struggling with parcels, helped by the hands of invisible people from within the carriage.  Martin Cosgrave strode down the platform, eagerness, joy, sense of proprietorship, already in his stride.

“Rose!” he exclaimed while the girl’s back was still turned to him.

His voice shook in spite of him.  The woman turned about sharply.

Martin Cosgrave gave a little start back.  It was not Rose Dempsey, but her sister, Sheela.  How like Rose she had grown!

“Martin!” she exclaimed, putting out her hand.  He gave it a hurried shake and then searched the railway carriage with burning eyes.  The people he saw there were all strangers, tired-looking travellers.  When he turned from the railway carriage Sheela Dempsey was rushing with her parcels into a waiting-room.  He strode after her.  He looked at the girl.  How unlike Rose she was after all!  Nobody—­nobody—­could ever be like Rose Dempsey!

“Where is Rose?” he asked.

Sheela Dempsey looked up into the face of Martin Cosgrave and saw there what she had half-dreaded to see.

“Martin,” she said, “Rose is not coming home.”

Martin Cosgrave gripped the door of the waiting-room.  The train whistled outside and glided from the station.  He heard a woman’s cheerful voice cry out a conventional “good-bye, good-bye,” and through the window he saw the flutter of a dainty handkerchief.  A truck was wheeled past the waiting-room.  There was the crack of a whip and some cars rattled away over the road.  Then there was silence.

Sheela Dempsey walked over to him and laid a hand upon his shoulder.  When she spoke her voice was full of an understanding womanly sympathy.

“Don’t be troubling over it, Martin,” she said, “Rose is not worth it.”  She spoke her sister’s name with some bitterness.

Vaguely Martin Cosgrave looked into the girl’s eyes.  He read there in a dim way what the girl could not say of her sister.