had gone wrong, and the kindness to put himself out to make its
endurance a little easier."

Joan drew back quickly.

"Harry Luttrell," she whispered.

"Yes. He had once been stationed at Exeter. He knew Robert Croyle and
the sisters. He guessed what might happen to me. Perhaps he knew that it
was going to happen."

So, when Stella, having pulled down her veil that none might see her
face, was stumbling along the platform in search of an empty carriage,
a hand was very gently laid upon her and Harry Luttrell was at her side.
He had come all the way from London to befriend her, should she need it.
If he had seen her with her little girl, he would have kept out of sight
and himself have returned to London by a later train.

"That was fine," cried Joan.

"Fine, yes!" answered Stella. "You realise that, Joan, and you have
never been in real trouble, or known what men are when kindness
interferes with their comfort. I am not blaming people, but women do get
the worst of it, if they are fools enough--wicked enough if you like, to
do as I did. I knew men--lots of them. I was bound to. I was fair game,
you see."

Joan's forehead wrinkled. The doors of knowledge had been opening very
rapidly for her during the last few minutes. But she was still often at
a loss.

"Fair game. Why? I don't understand."

"I had been divorced. Therefore I wasn't dangerous. Complications
couldn't follow from a little affair with me." Stella explained
bitterly. "I had men on my doorstep always. But not one of these men who
protested and made love to me, would have put themselves out to do what
Harry Luttrell did. It was fine--yes. But for three years I have been
wondering whether Harry Luttrell would not really have been kinder if he
had thought of his own comfort too, and had never travelled to Exeter to
befriend me."

"Why?" asked Joan.

"I should have thrown myself out of the carriage and saved myself--oh,
so much sorrow afterwards," Stella Croyle answered in so simple and
natural a voice that Joan could not disbelieve her.

Joan clasped her hands before her eyes and then gazed again at Stella
sitting in front of her, with pity and wonder. It was so hard for her to
understand that this pretty woman, who made it her business to be gay,
whom she had met from time to time in this house and had chatted with
and forgotten, had passed through so dreadful an ordeal of suffering and
humiliation. She was to look closer still into the myster