She raised herself on tip toes and approached her red lips to his face—­lips of an intense color to go with the marked pallor of the rest of the face, and which surely were never offered to him in vain before—­but he was beyond their seduction at last.

“You’ve decided?” he said.

“Of course!”

“All right!  Good-bye, then!  You promised to cleave to me through thick and thin ‘till death did us part.’  I’ll have no halfway business,” and he turned on his heel, and without looking back he pushed his way through the crowd, which chatted and fussed and never even noted the passing of a broken heart.

The pretty creature watched him out of sight.

There was a humorous pout on her lips.  But she seemed so sure of her man!  He would come back, of course—­when she called him—­if she ever did!  Probably she liked him better at that moment than she had liked him in two years.  He had opposed her.  He had defied her power over him.  He had once more become a man to conquer—­if she ever had time!

But just now there was something more important.  That train!  It was three minutes to the schedule time.

As he disappeared into the crowd she drew a breath of relief, and hurried out of the waiting room and pushed her way to the platform, along which she hurried to the parlor car, where she seated herself comfortably, as if no man with a broken life had been set down that day against her record.

To be sure, she could not quite rid herself of thoughts of his face, but the recollection rather flattered her, and did not in the least prevent her noticing the looks of admiration with which two men on the opposite side of the car were regarding her.

Once or twice she glanced out of the window, apparently alternately expecting and dreading to see her stalwart husband come sprinting down the platform for the kiss he had refused.

He didn’t come!

She was relieved as the train started—­yet she hated to feel he could really let her go like that!

She never guessed at the depth of suffering she had brought him.  How could she appreciate what she could never feel?  She never dreamed that as the train pulled out into the storm he stood at the end of the station, and watched it slowly round the curve under the bridge and pass out of sight.  No one was near to see him turn aside, and rest his arms against the brick wall, to bury his face in them, and sob like a child, utterly oblivious of the storm that beat upon him.

* * * * *

And he sat down.

“Come on,” yelled the Youngster, “where’s the claque?” And he began to applaud furiously.

“Oh, if there is a claque, the rest of us don’t need to exert ourselves,” said the Lawyer, indolently.

“But I say,” asked the Youngster, after the Journalist had made his best bow.  “I AM disappointed.  Was that all?”

“My goodness,” commented the Doctor, as he lighted a fresh cigar.  “Isn’t that enough?”