There’s something about that--the breaking of bread together, you know--which rather does more than you’d ever suspect unless you’ve tried it under conditions like mine. We not only broke bread; we broke a full portion of broiled white fish between us, another of cauliflower au gratin. I served those while she poured our two cups of orange pekoe from the same little pot and, for both of us, she mixed salad dressing of her own in a bowl. The best dressing, by the way, I’d ever tasted. She’d the prettiest hands I’d ever seen; and to have them doing things for me! Occasionally, but with rapidly lessening frequency, I wondered about George,--why he didn’t show up for supper and to what I’d left him with Dib. I ventured to ask Doris about him. “Oh, he’s not hungry,” she assured me. As I remembered him, he hadn’t looked it; he’d only looked worried, whereas she didn’t at all. She had true nerve, you see. That dinner was so delightful that I longed to forget that she was playing for her liberty for the next ten years. I didn’t want any other element in this but just her and me. It ended with the check which she let me pay without silly argument; then we had to get up, and never more reluctant feet than mine moved from a dining car. She went through the Pullmans in front of me; at each door, I came beside her, opened it; for a moment we were close. I hoped we were going to her compartment; but she surprised me in the vestibule of the third car rear from the diner. No one was following just then; the doors on both sides were tightly shut. She turned and looked up at me. “Which is it?” she asked, straight. I knew what she meant; and at that second I suddenly decided. “I keep your suit case,” I said. “And you’ll give it back to me?” “Where will you want it?” “New York. I’m off at Cleveland, as I said, but I’ll come to New York later.” “I’ll take it there for you,” I said, and it was in the manner of an agreement, “if I possibly can; and I will give it to you under one condition.” I waited. “Nobody’s listening,” she urged me. I told her. “It’s this. I bring it to you, alone. I’ll be alone; you must be. You must give me a chance then to talk to you.” “What about?” “Can’t you imagine?” She gazed into my eyes without wavering. “I reckon! You’ll give it back and ask me to give it back again to you--to destroy! All right! That’s a go! I’ll run that chance with you!” She held out her hand and I grasped it and she grasped mine, firmly and well. Somebody came through; just an ordinary passenger; but of course we dropped hands. When the doors were closed again, she went into her bag. “Here’s the key to the suit case,” she offered it to me. “Sorry you won’t find more for you to use inside; but there’s a new toothbrush, anyway. Please have it!” “You’ve another?” We were suddenly particular about little things with each other. “There’re more in Cleveland,” she replied. “Where do you stop in New York?” “The Belmont.”