With gentle force he picked her up and set her on the seat of the car. Then he approached the window. There was a bar across it, which it took him a minute to bend, but the chances were that where his head would pass the rest of his body might follow. June hid her face and moaned as he took off his coat; then he kissed her and thrust his head under the bar. He wriggled through, stood on the footboard, smiled again grimly through the window, and then looked down. At any rate, he had given a reason of sorts. Then he looked up. Instantly he saw that, unless head or wrist or finger should unexpectedly fail him, the most dangerous part of his exploit lay at the very beginning. There was no descent from the step on which he stood. The cars were slung from axles, and in order to get to the rim that held the axles themselves he must climb to the roof of the coach. He glanced at the roof of the coach twenty feet below and to his left. He saw that it had a curved rain-sill like that of the top of a railway carriage. Good; the coaches would be all alike. He set his knees in the window-frame once more. June was still lying with her face hidden on the seat. His fingers felt blindly for the rain-sill; they found it, and he moistened his other hand. He wished he could have glued it, for for some moments mere friction must be half his support. For an instant he thought calmly and abysmally; then he risked it.... It succeeded. He knelt on the roof, holding the sling and coupling that hung from the car-axle overhead. He glanced up at the axle to which he must swarm. The singing in the cars continued, and a babble of sound rose lightly from below. Evidently he had not been seen to get out of the car. But then, who would have thought of looking? * * * * * It was as he swarmed up the coupling that there first came over him the sense of the difference between the reason he had given, and the real reason that had brought him out from that brightly lighted and cushioned car in which he might far more easily have stopped. And the realisation of that difference brought with it, very strangely, the sense, not of bodily peril, but of inner peace. It was unaccountable, but there it was, not to be argued about. The only thing that disturbed this peace, and that but lightly, was that his venture had not a more profitable object. Folk did less dangerous things for far better reason--to save life, or property, or something else worth while. But this neck-risking of his was--could only be--bravado. He knew perfectly well that in the circumstances nobody would have thought a penny the worse of June. "The woman I marry----" he had known that to be an hypocrisy even when he had said it. No, he was merely idiotically showing-off, and that peace at his heart would presently prove to be an illusion....