It is curious how frequently in this world our attempts to stimulate and uplift swoop back on us and smite us like boomerangs.  Ashe’s presence was the direct outcome of her lecture on enterprise, and it added a complication to an already complicated venture.

She did her best to be fair to Ashe.  It was not his fault that he was about to try to deprive her of five thousand dollars, which she looked on as her personal property; but illogically she found herself feeling a little hostile.

She glanced furtively at him over the magazine, choosing by ill chance a moment when he had just directed his gaze at her.  Their eyes met and there was nothing for it but to talk; so she tucked away her hostility in a corner of her mind, where she could find it again when she wanted it, and prepared for the time being to be friendly.  After all, except for the fact that he was her rival, this was a pleasant and amusing young man, and one for whom, until he made the announcement that had changed her whole attitude toward him, she had entertained a distinct feeling of friendship—­nothing warmer.

There was something about him that made her feel that she would have liked to stroke his hair in a motherly way and straighten his tie, and have cozy chats with him in darkened rooms by the light of open fires, and make him tell her his inmost thoughts, and stimulate him to do something really worth while with his life; but this, she held, was merely the instinct of a generous nature to be kind and helpful even to a comparative stranger.

“Well, Mr. Marson,” she said, “Here we are!”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Ashe.

He was conscious of a marked increase in the exhilaration the starting of the expedition had brought to him.  At the back of his mind he realized there had been all along a kind of wistful resentment at the change in this girl’s manner toward him.  During the brief conversation when he had told her of his having secured his present situation, and later, only a few minutes back, on the platform of Paddington Station, he had sensed a coldness, a certain hostility—­so different from her pleasant friendliness at their first meeting.

She had returned now to her earlier manner and he was surprised at the difference it made.  He felt somehow younger, more alive.  The lilt of the train’s rattle changed to a gay ragtime.  This was curious, because Joan was nothing more than a friend.  He was not in love with her.  One does not fall in love with a girl whom one has met only three times.  One is attracted—­yes; but one does not fall in love.

A moment’s reflection enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly.  This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love.  It was merely the natural desire of a good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species.

“Well, what do you think of it all, Mr. Marson?” said Joan.  “Are you sorry or glad that you let me persuade you to do this perfectly mad thing?  I feel responsible for you, you know.  If it had not been for me you would have been comfortably in Arundell Street, writing your Wand of Death.”