“Yes, by the next train,” I answered, deciding upon that course without hesitation.

“So am I, mam’zelle,” he said, raising his hand to his oil-skin cap; “I will pay this sixpence, and you can give it me again, when you buy your ticket in the office.”

I smiled quickly, gladly; and he smiled back upon me, but gravely, as if his face was not used to a smile.  I passed on into the station, where a train was standing, and people hurrying about the platform, choosing their carriages.  At the ticket-office they changed my Australian gold-piece without a word; and I sought out my seaman friend to return the sixpence he had paid to me.  He had done me a greater kindness than he could ever know, and I thanked him heartily.  His honest, deep-set, blue eyes glistened under their shaggy eyebrows as they looked down upon me.

“Can I do nothing more for you, mam’zelle?” he asked.  “Shall I see after your luggage?”

“Oh! that will be all right, thank you,” I replied, “but is this the train for Southampton, and how soon will it start?”

I was watching anxiously the stream of people going to and fro, lest I should see some person who knew me.  Yet who was there in London who could know me?

“It will be off in five minutes,” answered the seaman.  “Shall I look out a carriage for you?”

He was somewhat careful in making his selection; finally he put me into a compartment where there were only two ladies, and he stood in front of the door, but with his back turned toward it, until the train was about to start.  Then he touched his hat again with a gesture of farewell, and ran away to a second-class carriage.

I sighed with satisfaction as the train rushed swiftly through the dimly-lighted suburbs of London, and entered upon the open country.  A wan, watery line of light lay under the brooding clouds in the west, tinged with a lurid hue; and all the great field of sky stretching above the level landscape was overcast with storm-wrack, fleeing swiftly before the wind.  At times the train seemed to shake with the Wast, when it was passing oyer any embankment more than ordinarily exposed; but it sped across the country almost as rapidly as the clouds across the sky.  No one in the carriage spoke.  Then came over me that weird feeling familiar to all travellers, that one has been doomed to travel thus through many years, and has not half accomplished the time.  I felt as if I had been fleeing from my home, and those who should have been my friends, for a long and weary while; yet it was scarcely an hour since I had made my escape.

In about two hours or more—­but exactly what time I did not know, for my watch had stopped—­my fellow-passengers, who had scarcely condescended to glance at me, alighted at a large, half-deserted station, where only a few lamps were burning.  Through the window I could see that very few other persons were leaving the train, and I concluded we had not yet reached the terminus.  A porter came up to me as I leaned my head through the window.