“No—­not yet,” said he.  “One thing more.  You’ve been thinking things about me.  Well, do you imagine this busy brain of mine hasn’t been thinking a few things about you?  Why, Margaret, you need me even more than I need you, though I need you more than I’d dare try to tell you.  You need just such a man as me to give you direction and purpose—­real backbone.  Primping and preening in carriages and parlors—­that isn’t life.  It’s the frosting on the cake.  Now, you and I, we’re going to have the cake itself.  Maybe with, maybe without the frosting.  But not the frosting without the cake, Margaret!”

“So!” she exclaimed, drawing a long breath when he had ended.  “So!  This is why you chose that five o’clock train and sent Selina back.  You thought to—­”

He laughed as if echoing delight from her; he patted her enthusiastically on the knee.  “You’ve guessed it!  Go up head!  I didn’t want you to have time to say and do foolish things.”

She bit her lip till the blood came.  Ringing in her ears and defying her efforts to silence them were those words of his about the cake and the frosting—­“the cake, maybe with, maybe without frosting; but not the frosting without the cake!” She started to speak; but it was no interruption from him that checked her, for he sat silent, looking at her with all his fiery strength of soul in his magnetic eyes.  Again she started to speak; and a third time; and each time checked herself.  This impossible man, this creator of impossible situations!  She did not know how to begin, or how to go on after she should have begun.  She felt that even if she had known what to say she would probably lack the courage to say it—­that final-test courage which only the trained in self-reliance have.  The door opened.  A station attendant came in out of the frosty night and shouted: 

“Chicago Express!  Express for—­Buffalo!  Chicago!  Minneapolis!  St. Paul!—­the Northwest!—­the Far West!  All—­a—­board!”

Craig seized the handbags.  “Come on, my dear!” he cried, getting into rapid motion.

She sat still.

He was at the door.  “Come on,” he said.

She looked appealingly, helplessly round that empty, lonely, strange station, its lights dim, its suggestions all inhospitable.  “He has me at his mercy,” she said to herself, between anger and despair.  “How can I refuse to go without becoming the laughing-stock of the whole world?”

“Come on—­Rita!” he cried.  The voice was aggressive, but his face was deathly pale and the look out of his eyes was the call of a great loneliness.  And she saw it and felt it.  She braced herself against it; but a sob surged up in her throat—­the answer of her heart to his heart’s cry of loneliness and love.

“Chicago Express!” came in the train-caller’s warning roar from behind her, as if the room were crowded instead of tenanted by those two only.  “All aboard! ...Hurry up, lady, or you’ll get left!”