Tom drew himself up stiffly, overlooking the extended hand.

“’Good-by’—­that is ‘God be with you,’ isn’t it, Mr. Martin?  I reckon you don’t mean that.  Good night.”  And this is the way Thomas Jefferson turned his back on three and a half years of Beersheba, with hot tears in his eyes and an angry word on his lips.

The Pintsch lights were burning brightly in the Pullman, and these—­and the tears—­blinded him.  Some of the sections in the middle of the car were made down for the night, and while he was stumbling in the wake of the porter over the shoes and the hand-bags left in the aisle, the train started.

“Lower ten, sah,” said the black boy, and went about his business in the linen locker.  But Tom stood balancing himself with the swaying of the car and staring helplessly at the occupant of lower twelve, a young girl in a gray traveling coat and hat, sitting with her face to the window.

“Why, you—­somebody!” she exclaimed, turning to surprise him in the act of glowering down on her.  “Do you know, I thought there might be just one chance in a thousand that you’d go home for Christmas, so I made the porter tell me when we were coming to Beersheba.  Why don’t you sit down?”

Tom edged into the opposite seat and shook hands with her, all in miserable, comfortless silence.  Then he blurted out: 

“If I’d had any idea you were on this train, I’d have walked.”

Ardea laughed, and for all his misery he could not help remarking how much sweeter the low voice was growing, and how much clearer the blue of her eyes was under the forced light of the gas-globes.  He had seen her only two or three times since that blush-kindling noon at Crestcliffe Inn.  Their Paradise goings and comings had not coincided very evenly.

“You are just the same rude boy, aren’t you?” she said leniently.  “Are there no girls in Beersheba to teach you how to be nice?”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he hastened to say.  “I’m always saying the wrong thing to you.  But if you only knew, you wouldn’t speak to me; much less let me sit here and talk to you.”

“If I only knew what?  Perhaps you would better tell me and let me judge for myself,” she suggested; and out of the past came a flick of the memory whip to make him feel again that she was immeasurably his senior.

“I’m expelled,” he said bluntly.

“Oh!” For a full minute, as it seemed to him, she looked steadfastly out of the window at the wall of blackness flitting past, and the steady drumming of the wheels grated on his nerves and got into his blood.  When it was about to become unbearable she turned and gave him her hand again.  “I’m just as sorry as I can be!” she declared, and the slate-blue eyes confirmed it.

Tom hung his head, just as he had in the trying interview with Doctor Tollivar.  But he told her a great deal more than he had told the principal.