“That’s not my fault,” said Eliza.

“Oh?  Well, that’s for you to settle with yourself.  I thought I’d come and tell you what I thought about it, and that he was going.  That’s all I’ve got to say.”

“But I’ve something more to say, and you’ll stay and hear it.”  She folded her arms upon her breast, and looked at him, a contemptuous, indignant Amazon.  “You think Mr. Bates would thank you if you got me to go away with him because I was afraid he’d die.  You think”—­growing sarcastic—­“that Mr. Bates wants me to go with him because I’m sorry for him.  I tell you, if I did what you’re asking, Mr. Bates would be the first to tell you to mind your own business and to send me about mine.”

She relapsed into cold silence for a minute, and then added, “If you think Mr. Bates can’t do his own love-making, you’re vastly mistaken.”

It did not help to soothe Alec that, when he went home, his brother laughed at his recital.

“She is a coarse-minded person,” he said.  “I shall never speak to her again.”

This had happened the day before he drove Bates to the station.

It was a midday train.  The railway platform was comparatively empty, for the season of summer visitors was past.  The sun glared with unsoftened light on the painted station building, on the bare boards of the platform, upon the varnished exterior of the passenger cars, and in, through their windows, upon the long rows of red velvet seats.  Alec disposed Bates and his bundles on a seat near the stove at the end of one of the almost empty cars.  Then he stood, without much idea what to say in the few minutes before the train started.

“Well,” said he, “you’ll be at Quebec before dark.”

As they both knew this, Bates did not consider it worth an answer.  His only desire was that the train should be gone, so that he might be left alone.  He was a good deal oppressed by the idea of his indebtedness to Alec, but he had already said all on that head that was in him to say; it had not been much.

An urchin came by, bawling oranges.  They looked small and sour, but, for sheer lack of anything better to do, Alec went out of the car to buy a couple.  He was just stepping in again to present them when, to his surprise, he became aware that one of the various people on the platform was Eliza Cameron.  When he caught sight of her she was coming running from the other end of the train, her face red with exertion and her dress disordered.  She looked in at the windows, saw Bates, and entered where Alec had intended to enter, he drawing aside, and she not even seeing him.

The impetus of his intention carried Alec on to the outer porch of the car, but his consideration for Bates caused him then to turn his back to the door, and gaze down the long level track, waiting until Eliza should come out again.

The prospect that met his gaze was one in which two parallel straight lines met visibly in the region of somewhere.  He remembered learning that such two lines do, in truth, always meet in infinity.  He wondered drearily if this were a parable.  As he saw his life, all that he desired and all that was right seemed to lie in two tracks, side by side, but for ever apart.