tale had leaked out.  I suppose the Spanish wife had not kept her ideas absolutely to herself—­and the son joined his regiment.  The Spanish wife is still here, but, needless to say, she is not at all loved by her husband’s family, who watch her like lynxes for fear she will abduct the child, and she has developed as neat a case of hysterical mania of persecution as I ever encountered.  So you see that even in this quiet place there are tragedies behind the walls.  But I seem to be telling a story out of my turn!”

“And a forbidden war story, at that,” said the Youngster.  “So to change the air—­whose turn is it?”

The Journalist puffed out his chest.  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, as he rose to his feet, and struck, the traditional attitude of a monologist, “I regret to inform you that you will be obliged to have a taste of my histrionic powers.  I’ve got to act out part of this story—­couldn’t seem to tell it in any other form.”

* * * * *

“Dora!”

A slender young woman turned at the word, so sharply spoken over her shoulder, and visibly paled.

She was strikingly attractive, in her modish tailor frock, and her short tight jacket of Persian lamb, with its high, collar of grey fur turned up to her ears.

Her singularly fair skin, her red hair, her brown eyes, with dark lashes, and narrowly pencilled eyebrows that were almost black, gave her a remarkable look, and at first sight suggested that Nature had not done it all.  But a closer observation convinced one that the strange combination of such hair and such eyebrows was only one of those freaks by which Nature now and then warns the knowing to beware even of marvellous beauty.  In this case it stamped a woman as one who—­by several signs—­might be identified by the initiated as one of those, who, without reason or logic, spring now and again from most unpromising soil!

She had walked the entire length of the station from the wide doors on the street side to the swing doors at the opposite end which gave entrance to the tracks.

As she passed, no man had failed to turn and look after her, as, with her well hung skirts just clearing the wet pavement, she stepped daintily over the flagging, and so lightly that neither boots nor skirt were the worse for it.  One sees women in Paris who know that art, but it is rare in an American.

She must have been long accustomed to attracting masculine eyes, and no wonder, for when she stepped into the place she seemed to give a color to the atmosphere, and everything and everybody went grey and commonplace beside her.

It was a terrible night in November.

The snow was falling rapidly outside, and the wind blew as it can blow only on the New England coast.

It was the sort of night that makes one forced to be out look forward lovingly to home, and think pityingly of the unfortunate, while those within doors involuntarily thank God for comfort, and hug at whatever remnant of happiness living has left them.