Father Roland had told him the train would wait at this point fifteen minutes, and even now he heard the clanging of handbells announcing the fact that hot coffee, sandwiches, and ready-prepared suppers were awaiting the half-starved passengers.  The trucks grated harshly, the whirring groan of the air-brakes ran under him like a great sigh, and suddenly he was looking down into the face of a pop-eyed man who was clanging a bell, with all the strength of his right arm, under his window, and who, with this labour, was emitting a husky din of “Supper—­supper ‘ot an’ ready at the Royal” in his vain effort to drown the competition of a still more raucous voice that was bellowing:  “’Ot steaks an’ liver’n onions at the Queen Alexandry!” As David made no movement the man under his window stretched up his neck and yelled a personal invitation, “W’y don’t you come out and eat, old chap?  You’ve got fifteen minutes an’ mebby ’arf an ’our; supper—­supper ‘ot an’ ready at the Royal!” Up and down the length of the dimly lighted platform David heard that clangor of bells, and as if determined to capture his stomach or die, the pop-eyed man never moved an inch from his window, while behind him there jostled and hurried an eager and steadily growing crowd of hungry people.

David thought again of the woman in the third coach back.  Was she getting off here, he wondered?  He went to the door of the smoking compartment and waited another half minute for Father Roland.  It was quite evident that his delay was occasioned by some difficulty in the baggage car, a difficulty which perhaps his own presence might help to straighten out.  He hesitated between the thought of joining the Missioner and the stronger impulse to go back into the third coach.  He was conscious of a certain feeling of embarrassment as he returned for the third time to look at her.  He was not anxious for her to see him again unless Father Roland was with him.  His hesitancy, if it was not altogether embarrassment, was caused by the fear that she might quite naturally regard his interest in a wrong light.  He was especially sensitive upon that point, and had always been.  The fact that she was not a young woman, and that he had seen her dark hair finely threaded with gray, made no difference with him in his peculiarly chivalric conception of man’s attitude toward woman.  He did not mean to impress himself upon her; this time he merely wanted to see whether she had roused herself, or had left the car.  At least this was the trend of his mental argument as he entered the third coach.

The car was empty.  The woman was gone.  Even the old man who had hobbled in on crutches at the last station had hobbled out again in response to the clanging bells.  When he came to the seat where the woman had been, David paused, and would have turned back had he not chanced to look out through the window.  He was just in time to catch the quick upturn of a passing face.  It was her face.  She saw him and recognized him; she seemed for a moment to hesitate; her eyes were filled again with that haunting fire; her lips trembled as if about to speak; and then, like a mysterious shadow, she drifted out of his vision into darkness.