Dusk was misting down, outdoors, when with dragging steps he came out of the station.  He looked hazily up and down the street, where the corner-lamps and shop-windows now were lighted; and, after dreary hesitation, he went in search of a pawn-shop, and found one.  The old man who operated it must have been a philanthropist, for Noble was so fortunate as to secure a loan of nine dollars upon his watch.  Surprised at this, he returned to the station, and went back to the same old bench.

It was fully occupied, and he stood for some time looking with vague reproach at the large family of coloured people who had taken it.  He had a feeling that he lived there and that these coloured people were trespassers; but upon becoming aware that part of an orange was being rubbed over his left shoe by the youngest of the children, he groaned abruptly and found another bench.

A little after six o’clock a clanging and commotion in the train-shed outside, attending the arrival of a “through express,” stirred him from his torpor, and he walked heavily across the room to the same ticket-window he had twice blocked; but there was no queue attached to it now.  He rested his elbow upon the apron and his chin upon his hand, while the clerk waited until he should state his wishes.  This was a new clerk, who had just relieved the other.

“Well!  Well!” he said at last.

“I’ll take it now,” Noble responded.

“What’ll you take now?”

“That ticket.”

“What ticket?”

“The same one I wanted before,” Noble sighed.

The clerk gave him a piercing look, glanced out of the window and saw that there were no other clients, then went to a desk at the farther end of his compartment, and took up some clerical work he had in hand.

Noble leaned upon the apron of the window, waiting; and if he thought anything, he thought the man was serving him.

The high, vaulted room became resonant with voices and the blurred echoes of mingling footsteps on the marble floor, as passengers from the express hurried anxiously to the street, or more gaily straggled through, shouting with friends who came to greet them; and among these moving groups there walked a youthful fine lady noticeably enlivening to the dullest eye.  She was preceded by a brisk porter who carried two travelling-bags of a rich sort, as well as a sack of implements for the game of golf; and she was warm in dark furs, against which the vasty clump of violets she wore showed dewy gleamings of blue.

At sight of Noble Dill, more than pensive at the ticket-window, she hesitated, then stopped and observed him.  That she should observe anybody was in a way a coincidence, for, as it happened, she was herself the most observed person in all the place.  She was veiled in two veils, but she had been seen in the train without these, and some of her fellow-travellers, though strangers to her, were walking near her in a hypocritical way, hoping still not to lose sight of her, even veiled.  And although the shroudings permitted the most meagre information of her features, what they did reveal was harmfully piquant; moreover, there was a sweetness of figure, a disturbing grace; while nothing could disguise her air of wearing that many violets casually as a daily perquisite and matter of course.