Then realizing that the train was well under way and they had been carried some distance past the station, she cried in alarm, "But you can't get off! They're carrying you away!" She was almost wringing her hands in her excitement. "Well, I don't mind it if you don't," said Phil, sitting down beside her and laughing at her concern. "I'm going along with you. Something Miss Roberta said last night on her way home started me to thinking, and--the result was, I decided to spend another day and night in Bauer. It's positively my last appearance, however. I'll leave for good in the morning." What Roberta could have said to make such a change in his plans was more than Mary could imagine. She almost had to bite her tongue to keep from asking, and Phil, knowing that he had aroused her wildest curiosity, laughed again. But he wasted no more time in teasing her. "No, really," he said, "I was joking. A telegram from my firm routed me out about six o'clock this morning. They want me to go to St. Louis to see some parties before returning to New York. I figured it out that I could double things up there so as to give me one more day here. But it took me so long to figure it, that, by the time I had made up my mind, there was only a moment to stuff my things into my suit-case and call a taxicab. When I got down to the station I saw I had about three minutes in which to snatch a sandwich and a cup of coffee at the lunch counter; but the coffee was so hot I came near missing my train. Had to run a block and swing up on the rear platform. If it had been the regular express I couldn't have caught it. Luckily it was a freight, so here I am." He did not add that an unaccountable impulse to go back to Bauer had seized him the night before when he bade her good-night, or that the impulse had been strengthened afterward by a casual remark of Roberta's about Lieutenant Boglin. Roberta thought she saw the first symptoms of a budding romance on Bogey's part. Not being given to the practice of analyzing his feelings, Phil did not stop to ask himself why it should make any difference to him what the lieutenant thought of little Mary Ware, nor did he realize at the time how much that remark influenced his decision to spend one more day with her. Afterwards he used to say that it was Fate and not himself that was responsible for that journey; that it was destined from the beginning he should chase madly after that freight-train, catch it, and thereby give himself four long uninterrupted hours in which to grow better acquainted with her than he had ever been before.