a sleeping child's. As the big
motorman went back to his post, he explained a little sheepishly to the
two, who had watched his operation in attentive silence, "It's against
the rules, I know, but there ain't anybody but you two here, and he
don't look as though he'd really got his growth yet. I got a boy ain't
sixteen that looks as old as he does, and ruggeder at that. I reckon the
long hours are too much for him."

"Do you know him?" asked Rankin.

The motorman turned his red, weather-beaten face to them from the
doorway where he stood, pulling on his clumsy gloves. "Who, me?" he
asked. "No; I never seen him till to-day. He's a new hand, I reckon." He
drew the door after him with a rattling slam, rang the bell for himself,
and started the car forward.

In the warm, vibrating solitude of the car, the two young people looked
at each other in a silent transport. Lydia's dark eyes were glistening,
and she checked Rankin, about to speak, with a quick, broken "No; don't
say a word! You'd spoil it!"

There was between them one of the long, vital silences, full of
certainty of a common emotion, which had once or twice before marked a
significant change in their relation. Finally, "That's something I shall
never forget," said Lydia.

Rankin looked at her in silence, and then, quickly, away.

"It's like an answer to what I was saying--a refutation of what Dr.
Melton thinks--about people--"

As Rankin still made no answer, she exclaimed in a ravished surprise,
"Why, I never saw anything so lovely--that made me so happy! I feel warm
all over!"

Indeed, her face shone through the dusk upon her companion, who could
now no longer constrain himself to look away from her. He said, his
voice vibrant with a deep note which instantly carried Lydia back to the
other time when she had heard it, under the stars of last October, "It's
only an instrument exquisitely in tune which can so respond--" He broke
off, closed his lips, and, turning away from her, gazed sightlessly out
at the dim, flat horizon, now the only outline visible in the twilight.

Lydia said nothing, either then or when, after a long pause, he said
that he would leave the car at the next station.

"It has been very pleasant to see you again," he said, bending over his
tool-box, "and you mustn't lay it up against me that I haven't
congratulated you on your engagement. Of course you know how I wish you
all happiness."

"Thank you," said Lydia.

Ahead of the ca