nvas. "Yours is coming well. What's the matter with you to-day? You're
very mousy. Has the 'stranger who might' been scowling more than usual?
Or have you got a headache? I'm sure this atmosphere's enough to make
you. Did you see him this morning? Have you fainted at his feet yet?
Has he relented in the matter of umbrellas? I'm sure he can't have
passed the whole week without some act of grumpiness."

Nina leaned back and looked through half-shut eyes at the model's
beautiful form and stupid face.

"I went down in the same carriage with him on Thursday," she said
slowly.

"You did? Did he rush into the third class, where angels like himself
ought to fear to tread?"

"There was a fog. Thirds all full, and seconds too. The guard bundled us
both in, and the train started--and it took three or four hours to get
down."

"Any one else in the carriage?"

"Not so much as a mouse."

"What _did_ you do?"

"Do? What could I do? We sat in opposite corners as far as we could get
from each other, exchanging occasional glances of mutual detestation for
about an hour and a half. He knocked me down and walked on me once, and
took his hat off very politely and beg-pardoningly, but he never said a
word. He didn't even say he thought I was the door-mat. And then some
cabbages of his fell off the seat."

"Sure they weren't thistles?"

"Vegetables of some sort. And I said: 'You've dropped your----whatever
they were.' And he just bowed again in a thank-you-very-much-but-I'm-
sure-I-don't-know-what-business-it-is-of-yours sort of way. Do leave
that bread alone."

Molly, lost in the interest of the recital, was crumbling the bread as
though the floor of the life-room were the natural haunt of doves and
sparrows.

"Well?" she said.

"Well?" said Nina.

"Why ever didn't you ask him to put the window up, or down, or
something? I would have--just to hear if he has a voice."

"It wouldn't have been any good. He'd just have bowed again, and I'd had
enough bows to last a long time. No: I just said straight out that we
were a couple of idiots to sit there gaping at each other with our
tongues out, and why on earth shouldn't we talk?"

"You never did!"

"Or words to that effect, anyhow. And then he said----"

A long pause.

"What?"

"He told me why he never spoke to strangers."

"What a slap in the face! You poor----"

"Oh, he didn't say it like _that_, you silly idiot. And it was quite a
good reason."

"What was it?"