esh supporting
her head. Then you saw them raised helplessly to ask the eternal
question, "What shall I do?" And then you saw them in the characteristic
gesture of all sufferers--thrown back as if to toss off the pack of
unhappiness loaded on her back.

Her story burst and rose in precipitate bubbles. Her voice, at moments,
broke. The woman at her side remained perfectly calm, walled up in the
dull indifference accompanying the forties. At the jolting of the train
she merely shook her head--was she listening?--and turned toward the
flying window where her own story was passing.

Darkness would soon be falling. So I had an excuse for going to sleep,
and as soon as I shut my eyes the young woman took up her tale of woe
anew, twice, three times, ten times. The whole of her misery escaped
from under a mask of restraint.

"And listen, the other day...."

Did I need to hear what she was going to say?

At the end of one sentence I caught "my little girls." I could see her
little daughters--exactly alike, well-behaved, in airy frocks, two heads
with long, elastic curls, a twin step in walking--the sort of children
who are their parents all over again and invariably provoke the
question, "Whom does she look like--her father or her mother?" as if
you have to search into a child's origin.

I could see her husband too. Haven't all these women the same way of
saying "my husband"? I could see him short, bustling, jovial--really not
a bad sort--and with a chubby face, the only kind I could possibly match
up with the young woman's insipid face. Though she said nothing of a
garden, I imagined a very strait-laced one with rectilinear,
timidly-flowering walks, the sort of garden that is not cherished with
love. And I also saw the family in their home, a substantial white-stone
ornate building. I raised my eyes furtively. I must have got a poor view
of her when she came in an hour ago. Now she looked pretty. Her features
were regular, her color had heightened, her quivering mouth showed her
lips to the fullest, and her distressed hand, pushing back her hair,
disclosed a brow eloquent, smooth and flawless as ivory. Certain women
derive their entire beauty from the pathetic. She was one of them.

Her eyes turned from the scenery; I lowered my lids.

"He doesn't understand me any more ... it's all over ... I am nothing to
him ... still ... a love match...."

The scraps of her plaint were borne off by the wind, the engine snorted
mo