“I’m sorry,” she said, rather shyly.  “Every seat is taken.  I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me.”

Just then the carriage gave a violent lurch, as the express swung around a bend, and Diana, dropping everything she held, made a frantic clutch at the rack above her head, while her goods and chattels shot across the floor, her dressing-case sliding gaily along till its wild career was checked against the foot of the man in the corner.

With an air of resignation he rose and retrieved her belongings, placing them on the seat opposite her.

“It would have been better if you had taken my advice,” he observed, with a sort of weary patience.

Diana felt unreasonably angry with him.

“Why don’t you say ‘I told you so’ at once?” she said tartly.

A whimsical smile crossed his face.

“Well, I did, didn’t I?”

He stood for a moment looking down at her, steadying himself with one hand against the doorway, and her ill-humour vanishing as quickly as it had arisen, she returned the smile.

“Yes, you did.  And you were quite right, too,” she acknowledged frankly.

He laughed outright.

“Well done!” he cried.  “Not one woman in twenty will own herself in the wrong as a rule.”

Diana frowned.

“I don’t agree with you at all,” she bristled.  “Men have a ridiculous way of lumping all women together and then generalising about them.”

“Let’s discuss the question,” he said gaily.  “May I?” And scarcely waiting for her permission, he deliberately moved aside her things and seated himself opposite her.

“But you were busy writing,” she protested.

He threw an indifferent glance in the direction of his writing-pad, where it lay on the seat in the corner.

“Was I?” he answered calmly.  “Sometimes there are better things to do than scribbling—­pleasanter ones, anyway.”

Diana flushed.  It certainly was an unusual thing to do, to get into conversation with an unknown man with whom one chanced to be travelling, and she had never before committed such a breach of the conventions—­would have been shocked at the bare idea of it—­but there was something rather irresistible about this man’s cool self-possession.  He seemed to assume that a thing must of necessity be right, since he chose to do it.

She looked up and met his eyes watching her with a glint of amusement in their depths.

“No, it isn’t quite proper,” he agreed, answering her unspoken thought.  “But I’ve never bothered about that if I really wanted to do a thing.  And don’t you think”—­still with that flicker of laughter in his eyes—­“that it’s rather ridiculous, when two human beings are shut up in a box together for several hours, for each of them to behave as though the other weren’t there?”

He spoke half-mockingly, and Diana, felt that within himself he was ridiculing her prim little notions of conventionality.  She flushed uncomfortably.