all the possibilities--the glory and the pain
and the supreme happiness--which Love holds.

And Sara, standing alone and regretful that the friend had been lost in
the lover, never guessed that Tim's love was a thread which was destined
to cross and re-cross those other threads held by the fingers of Fate
until it had tangled the whole fabric of her life.

CHAPTER V

THE MAN IN THE TRAIN

"Oldhampton! Oldhampton! Change here for Motchley and Monkshaven!"

It was with a sigh of relief that Sara, in obedience to the warning
raucously intoned by a hurrying porter, vacated her seat in the railway
compartment in which she had travelled from Fallowdene. Her companions
on the journey had been an elderly spinster and her maid, and as the
former had insisted upon the exclusion of every breath of outside air,
Sara felt half-suffocated by the time they ran into Oldhampton
Junction. The Monkshaven train was already standing in the station, and,
commissioning a porter to transfer her luggage, she sauntered leisurely
along the platform, searching vainly for an empty compartment, where the
regulation of the supply of oxygen would not depend upon the caprice of
an old maid.

The train appeared to be very full, but at last she espied a first-class
smoking carriage which boasted but a single occupant--a man in the far
corner, half-hidden behind the newspaper he was holding--and, tipping
her porter, she stepped into the compartment and busied herself
bestowing her hand-baggage in the rack.

The man in the corner abruptly lowered his newspaper.

"This be a smoker," he remarked significantly.

Sara turned at the sound of his voice. The unwelcoming tones made it
abundantly clear that the remainder of his thought ran: "And you've no
business to get into it." A spark of amusement lit itself in her eyes.

"The railway company indicate as much on the window," she replied
placidly, with a glance towards the _Smoking Carriage_ label pasted
against the pane.

There came no response, unless an irritated crackling of newspaper could
be regarded as such--and the next moment, to the accompaniment of much
banging of doors and a final shout of: "Stand away there!" the train
began to move slowly out of the station.

Sara sat down with a sigh of relief that she had escaped her former
travelling companions, with their unpleasant predilection for a vitiated
atmosphere, and her thoughts wandered idly to the consideration of
the man in the c