But Winnie was not of the women--if indeed they exist--whose innocence merges in denseness and who can successfully maintain for a twelvemonth a total ignorance of the feelings of a man with whom they are thrown into familiar acquaintance. Suddenly, some two minutes before her train was due, her brain got to work--seized on the pieces of the puzzle with its quick perception. Here was a man, naturally ardent, essentially sanguine, in despair--surely about a woman? He did not deny the woman, though he protested that the matter was not 'serious.' Merely to look at him now proved it, for the moment at least, grievous. Well, for 'serious' she read practicable; for 'not serious' she substituted hopeless. Then he had looked at her in that queer way; the words had been all right, conceived in the appropriate vein of jocular flirtation; but the look was out of joint. And then his extreme and emotional concern for her welfare and prudent conduct! Would he, even though a Celt, have felt that anxiety quite so keenly, if another and hopeless affection had been dominating his mind? "Who'd look at me, anyhow?" That protest his modesty made consistent with an aspiration for any lady; it need not be taken too seriously. But his abrupt curt answer about his prospects--"I have none"----? The pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit pretty well, yet the proof was not conclusive. Say that the evidence was consistent, rather than demonstrative. Somehow, intangibly and beyond definition, there was something in the man's bearing, in his attitude, in the totality of his words and demeanour, which enforced the conviction. There even seemed an atmosphere in the bare, dirty little waiting-room which contained and conveyed it--something coming unseen from him to her, in spite of all his dogged effort to resist the transference. He smoked a second cigarette fiercely. Why, when he had been serene and cheerful all the afternoon, should he be so suddenly overcome by the thought of an absent woman that he could not or would not speak to or look at a friend to whom he was certainly much attached? The train rumbled into the station. "Here it is!" said Winnie, and rose to her feet. Dick Dennehy started and jumped up. For a second his eyes met hers. "Come along and put me into a carriage," she added hastily, and made her way at a quick pace to the train. "Where are the thirds?" They found the thirds, and she got in. He shut the door, and stood by it, waiting for the train to start. "You've got a wrong idea. I tell ye it's not serious, Winnie." He made his protest again, in a hard desperate voice. Then, with an effort, he took a more ordinary tone. "I'm full of business over this new idea--and with winding up the old connection, if I do it. I mayn't be seeing you for a few weeks. You will take care of yourself?" "Surely if anybody's had a warning, I have! Good-bye, Dick."