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“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 blow only on the New England coast.

It was the sort of night that makes one forced to be out look forward lovingly to home, and think pityingly of the unfortunate, while those within doors involuntarily thank God for comfort, and hug at whatever remnant of happiness living has left them.

The railway station was crowded.

The storm had come up suddenly at the close of a fair day. It was the hour, too, at which tradespeople, clerks, and laborers were returning home to the suburbs, and at which the steamboat express for New York was being made up–although it was not an encouraging night for the latter trip.

The pretty young woman with the red hair had looked through the door near the tracks, and glanced to the right, where the New York express should be. The gate was still closed. She was much too early! For a second she hesitated. She glanced about quickly, and the look was not without apprehension. It was evident that she did not see the man who was following her, and who seemed to have been waiting for her near the outer door. He did not speak, nor attract her attention in any way. The crowd served him in that!

After a moment’s hesitation, she turned toward the ladies’ waiting room, and just as she was about to enter, the man behind addressed her–and the word was said so low that no one near heard it–though, by the start she gave, it might have been a pistol shot.