Mrs. Kaye rose from the hard wooden seat, and she made what was for her a mighty effort to open the grimy waiting-room window; but it remained fast. Words were muttered behind her, words of which in her agitation she was quite unconscious. "Help the lady, can't ye!" The big labourer in the corner rose to his feet; he lumbered across the boarded floor, and laid his mighty shoulder against the sash; the flange gave way, and as the window opened there seemed to rush in a loud, confused wave of sound. A crowd of Saturday holiday-makers were streaming over the platform, and as they swayed backwards and forwards they completely hid for a moment the man and woman on whom Mrs. Kaye's eyes had been fixed. Then, as if the scene before her had been stage-managed by some master of his craft, the crowd thinned, divided in two, seeking on either side the few third-class carriages in the express, and Mrs. Kaye once more saw her son and Athena Maule; saw, with a sharp pang, that the look of strain and anguish had deepened on Bayworth Kaye's face, that his poor pretence at a smile had gone. The train groaned and moved a little forward, bringing the first-class carriages quite close to the waiting-room window. Putting out her hand, Mrs. Kaye could almost have touched Mrs. Maule on the shoulder; she shrank back, but the two on whom her whole attention was fixed were so far absorbed in each other as to be quite oblivious of everything round them. And at last Mrs. Kaye heard the voice she loved best in the world, nay the only voice she had ever really loved--asking the pitiful, futile little question: "Athena? Darling--say you're sorry I'm going!" There was a pause, and then the woman to whom the question had been put did in answer a very extraordinary thing. After having looked round, and with furtive, deliberate scrutiny noted that the platform was now practically deserted save for one man standing some way off, facing the bookstall and with his back to the express--she moved for a moment up on to the step of the railway carriage and turned her face, the lovely face now flushed with something like tenderness and pity, up to the young man. "Of course I'm sorry you're going----" Her clear, delicately modulated tones floated across the short space to where Mrs. Kaye was sitting. "Kiss me," breathed the beautiful lips; and then with a touch of impatience, "You can kiss me good-bye. Don't you understand?" His sudden response, the way his arm shot out and crushed her face, her slender shoulders, was far more than she had bargained for. She stepped back and shook herself like a bird whose plumage has been ruffled. And then the train began to move.