ting the door on the past and keeping it
shut until the night when their through sleeper was coupled to the Western
Pacific Flyer at A.& T. Junction. But late that evening, when she was
rummaging in her hand-bag for a handkerchief, she came upon David Kent's
letter and read it again.

"Loring tells me you are coming West," he wrote. "I assume there is at
least one chance in three that you will pass through Gaston. If you do,
and if the hour is not altogether impossible, I should like to meet your
train. One thing among the many the past two years have denied me--the
only thing I have cared much about, I think--is the sight of your face. I
shall be very happy if you will let me look at you--just for the minute or
two the train may stop."

There was more of it; a good bit more: but it was all guarded commonplace,
opening no window in the heart of the man David Kent. Yet even in the
commonplace she found some faint interlinings of the change in him; not a
mere metamorphosis of the outward man, as a new environment might make,
but a radical change, deep and biting, like the action of a strong acid
upon a fine-grained metal.

She returned the letter to its envelope, and after looking up Gaston on
the time-table fell into a heart-stirring reverie, with unseeing eyes
fixed on the restful blackness of the night rushing rearward past the car
windows.

"He has forgotten," she said, with a little lip-curl of disappointment.
"He thinks he ought to remember, and he is trying--trying because Grantham
said something that made him think he ought to try. But it's no use. It
was only a little summer idyl, and we have both outlived it."

She was still gazing steadfastly upon the wall of outer darkness when the
porter began to make down the berths and Penelope came over to sit in the
opposite seat. A moment later the younger sister made a discovery, or
thought she did.

"Why, Elinor Brentwood!" she said. "I do believe you are crying!"

Elinor's smile was serenity undisturbed.

"What a vivid imagination you have, Nell, dear," she scoffed. Then she
changed the subject arbitrarily: "Is mother quite comfortable? Did you
have the porter put a screen in her window?--you know she always insists
she can't breathe without it."

Penelope evaded the queries and took her turn at subject-wrenching--an art
in which she excelled.

"We are on our own railroad now, aren't we?" she asked, with purposeful
lack-interest. "And--let me see--isn't Mr