stance and was kissing her on
lips and head and cheeks. He wheeled, caught a hand from the nearest
car, and sprang in. Kincaid stood alone. The conductor made him an eager
sign. The wheels of the train clicked briskly. He glanced up and down
it, then sprang to Miranda, seized her hand, cried "Good-by!" snatched
Madame's, Flora's, Victorine's, Connie's,--"Good-by--Good-by!"--and came
to Anna.

And did she instantly begin, "I take--?" Not at all! She gave her hand,
both hands, but her lips stood helplessly apart. Flora, Madame,
Victorine, Constance, Miranda, Charlie from a car's top, the three
lieutenants, the battery's whole hundred, saw Hilary's gaze pour into
hers, hers into his. Only the eyes of the tumultuous crowd still
followed the train and its living freight. A woman darted to a car's
open door and gleaned one last wild kiss. Two, ten, twenty others, while
the conductor ran waving, ordering, thrusting them away, repeated the
splendid theft, and who last of all and with a double booty but
Constance! Anna beheld the action, though with eyes still captive. With
captive eyes, and with lips now shut and now apart again as she vainly
strove for speech, she saw still plainer his speech fail also. His hands
tightened on hers, hers in his.

"Good-by!" they cried together and were dumb again; but in their mutual
gaze--more vehement than their voices joined--louder than all the din
about them--confession so answered worship that he snatched her to his
breast; yet when he dared bend to lay a kiss upon her brow he failed
once more, for she leaped and caught it on her lips.

Dishevelled, liberated, and burning with blushes, she watched the end of
the train shrink away. On its last iron ladder the conductor swung aside
to make room for Kincaid's stalwart spring. So! It gained one handhold,
one foothold. But the foot slipped, the soldier's cap tumbled to the
ground, and every onlooker drew a gasp. No, the conductor held him, and
erect and secure, with bare locks ruffling in the wind of the train, he
looked back, waved, and so passed from sight.

Archly, in fond Spanish, "How do you feel now?" asked Madame of her
scintillant granddaughter as with their friends and the dissolving
throng they moved to the carriage; and in the same tongue Flora, with a
caressing smile, rejoined, "I feel like swinging you round by the hair."

Anna, inwardly frantic, chattered and laughed. "I don't know what
possessed me!" she cried.

But Const