With a little jerk of his shoulders he turned away to the bookstall, and I sat back in my corner looking dully out at the moving bustle on the platform below the big Norman Wilkinson posters of steamboats on a moonlit sea. Why couldn’t we start—it must be time! I’d said good-bye to his people, said it as if I were going no further than for one of my afternoon tramps at Porth Cariad with him. Now it was to him that I must say good-bye.... I couldn’t take it in yet. I didn’t want to. Above all, I didn’t want him to say it—or anything else. Again the situation was unexpectedly saved. The carriage-door burst open, and a man, panting with haste, flung a cape and a blue-covered _English Review_ on to the seat opposite mine, drew his handkerchief over his brow with a “Phew!” that meant “Only just done it!” then leaped out again on to the platform, calling, “Porter! when is this train due off?” “She ought to be off now, sir; we’ve been kept back by the boat, we’re ten minutes behind time.” But it was not this that made me sit up and turn quickly to the man who’d dropped back into the seat opposite to me. Slim shape, soft hat, Vandyke profile—yes, I thought I’d recognized the voice. Sydney Vandeleur, of all people—and at this moment! At any other, I might have longed to pick up that _English Review_ and hurl it at his picturesque head, but, for just this one occasion, I was overjoyed to see him. My employer wouldn’t be able to say any last words now, before him. “Monica—Miss Trant!” exclaimed Sydney quickly. “How odd! Did you see _her_?” “See whom?” “Why, Cicely!” Cicely! The tone in which he used her Christian name told me all there was to know, _there_! I’d thought so! “I’ve been seeing her off, you know, to Ireland—the Dublin boat—just gone off.” He nodded towards the quay. “Had to get back to London to-night; I am meeting the Mamma in Pont Street to-morrow morning, and——” “Take your seats, please! Take your seats!” The guard’s whistle was at his lips as my official _fiancé_ came racing back along the platform. An armful of papers and magazines fell on to my lap. “Here you are, Nancy. And, I say! I’m going to——” What he was going to say broke off again with a snap. And the last glance I had of his blonde, sun-browned face and quick eyes showed them frozen in a stare of utter astonishment at the sight of my travelling-companion. Yes—my goodness! What would he think of finding me with Sydney again?—Sydney, whose name has so often nearly cropped up between us. Would he think——? What difference would it make if he did? The train steamed out of the station across the flat Anglesey country, between marshlands ghostly-white with bog-cotton in the dusk.... What would he think?