wonder
what would have happened if I had? Suppose Harrington had not been
intoxicated when he entered the Pullman car Ontario that night!

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