For they were about to make a journey, I gathered, and the young woman wished to go alone.  I drank three cups of coffee, which accounted for my wakefulness later, and shamelessly watched the tableau before me.  The woman’s protest evidently went for nothing:  across the table the man grunted monosyllabic replies and grew more and more lowering and sullen.  Once, during a brief unexpected pianissimo in the music, her voice came to me sharply: 

“If I could only see him in time!” she was saying.  “Oh, it’s terrible!”

In spite of my interest I would have forgotten the whole incident at once, erased it from my mind as one does the inessentials and clutterings of memory, had I not met them again, later that evening, in the Pennsylvania station.  The situation between them had not visibly altered:  the same dogged determination showed in the man’s face, but the young woman—­daughter or wife?  I wondered—­had drawn down her veil and I could only suspect what white misery lay beneath.

I bought my berth after waiting in a line of some eight or ten people.  When, step by step, I had almost reached the window, a tall woman whom I had not noticed before spoke to me from my elbow.  She had a ticket and money in her hand.

“Will you try to get me a lower when you buy yours?” she asked.  “I have traveled for three nights in uppers.”

I consented, of course; beyond that I hardly noticed the woman.  I had a vague impression of height and a certain amount of stateliness, but the crowd was pushing behind me, and some one was standing on my foot.  I got two lowers easily, and, turning with the change and berths, held out the tickets.

“Which will you have?” I asked.  “Lower eleven or lower ten?”

“It makes no difference,” she said.  “Thank you very much indeed.”

At random I gave her lower eleven, and called a porter to help her with her luggage.  I followed them leisurely to the train shed, and ten minutes more saw us under way.

I looked into my car, but it presented the peculiarly unattractive appearance common to sleepers.  The berths were made up; the center aisle was a path between walls of dingy, breeze-repelling curtains, while the two seats at each end of the car were piled high with suitcases and umbrellas.  The perspiring porter was trying to be six places at once:  somebody has said that Pullman porters are black so they won’t show the dirt, but they certainly show the heat.

Nine-fifteen was an outrageous hour to go to bed, especially since I sleep little or not at all on the train, so I made my way to the smoker and passed the time until nearly eleven with cigarettes and a magazine.  The car was very close.  It was a warm night, and before turning in I stood a short time in the vestibule.  The train had been stopping at frequent intervals, and, finding the brakeman there, I asked the trouble.