her
like lynxes for fear she will abduct the child, and she has developed
as neat a case of hysterical mania of persecution as I ever
encountered. So you see that even in this quiet place there are
tragedies behind the walls. But I seem to be telling a story out of my
turn!"

"And a forbidden war story, at that," said the Youngster. "So to
change the air--whose turn is it?"

The Journalist puffed out his chest. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said,
as he rose to his feet, and struck, the traditional attitude of a
monologist, "I regret to inform you that you will be obliged to have a
taste of my histrionic powers. I've got to act out part of this
story--couldn't seem to tell it in any other form."

* * * * *

"Dora!"

A slender young woman turned at the word, so sharply spoken over her
shoulder, and visibly paled.

She was strikingly attractive, in her modish tailor frock, and her
short tight jacket of Persian lamb, with its high, collar of grey fur
turned up to her ears.

Her singularly fair skin, her red hair, her brown eyes, with dark
lashes, and narrowly pencilled eyebrows that were almost black, gave
her a remarkable look, and at first sight suggested that Nature had
not done it all. But a closer observation convinced one that the
strange combination of such hair and such eyebrows was only one of
those freaks by which Nature now and then warns the knowing to beware
even of marvellous beauty. In this case it stamped a woman as one
who--by several signs--might be identified by the initiated as one of
those, who, without reason or logic, spring now and again from most
unpromising soil!

She had walked the entire length of the station from the wide doors on
the street side to the swing doors at the opposite end which gave
entrance to the tracks.

As she passed, no man had failed to turn and look after her, as, with
her well hung skirts just clearing the wet pavement, she stepped
daintily over the flagging, and so lightly that neither boots nor
skirt were the worse for it. One sees women in Paris who know that
art, but it is rare in an American.

She must have been long accustomed to attracting masculine eyes, and
no wonder, for when she stepped into the place she seemed to give a
color to the atmosphere, and everything and everybody went grey and
commonplace beside her.

It was a terrible night in November.

The snow was falling rapidly outside, and the wind blew as it can blo