ned car.

"Oh, yes, but it wasn't on the tintype that the other fellow should have
been there at all."

"No, to be sure, but that made it all the better," said Alice's friend,
with sympathetic vision.

"Why, there's Eugene Herbert!" exclaimed Alice. "I really must go and
tell him that he pulled beautifully, if he didn't win, and comforting
things like that! Don't go off without me."

Before comment could be framed upon their lips, she had left her
companions and was slipping quickly down the platform.

"She knows him very well," said the other girl; "she'll be back in a
minute."

"She must have sharp eyes," said another of the group, as he looked
after her. But too many people were about for fixed attention to be
bestowed upon a single figure. There was but one light under the roof of
that part of the station where a young man was standing, looking rather
sulkily up and down. Alice was a little breathless with her rapid walk
when she reached him.

"I thought Francis was giving me a song and dance," he said, as he
grasped the hand she held out.

"No, I sent him," she explained hurriedly. "And I wanted to say--" She
paused an instant as she looked up at him.

He was serious, and wore a look of fatigue, in spite of the superb
physical health of his whole appearance. The light fell across her face
under the dark brim of her hat, and touched its beauty into something
vividly apart from the shadows and sordidness of the place, yet paler
than its sunlit brilliancy.

"I wanted to say," she went on bravely, "that I've changed my mind. At
least, I didn't really have any mind at all. And if you still want me
to--" she paused again, but something in his eyes reassured her--"I
will--I'd really _like_ to, you know, and _please_ be quiet, there isn't
but a minute to say it in--and I'd never have told you--at least not for
years and _years_--if you had won the race. Now let go of my hand--there
are _hundreds_ of people all about--and you can come and see me
to-morrow."

It was all over in a moment. She had snatched her hand away, and was
speeding back with a clear-eyed look of conscious rectitude, and he had
responded to the exhortations of divers occupants of the car, backed by
a disinterested brakeman, and stepped aboard.

"Oh, well, there's another race next year," he said to somebody who
spoke to him as he sat down in the end seat. It was early for such
optimism, and they thought Herbert had a disgustingly cheerful