The cool air did me good in restoring my self-confidence. It was a mistake, I told myself, that anyone might have made. We do not expect to meet thieves outside the Stock Exchange and the pages of the police reports. And it was quite a good story that I had invented--a slight debt to Turgenev perhaps, but then every short story that is written owes something either to Turgenev or de Maupassant or Tchecov. And I had, besides, the material for another really first-class tale. I could see it so clearly: the young girl prattling away pleasantly and the man getting more and more worried. “Will she never powder her nose?” he asks himself, and tries to hide his anxiousness beneath a series of amusing anecdotes. And no doubt I could make them discuss the modern girl, and she will say that she hates the girl who powders and paints; and he will have to agree with her, seeing that her complexion is her own, although he is, for the first time in his life, hating the fresh bloom of her cheek and praying that she were another sort of girl--a delightful situation. And then, at last, when all seems lost, I could make her lean forward to smell the flowers on the table, and a speck of yellow pollen would attach itself to her chin, to which he would, of course, call her attention. “Is there really,” she would say, and, opening her bag, she would take out her handkerchief, turn to the photograph beside them, and give him his opportunity. Up to that point it would be quite simple. But beyond it a lot of thought would be required. So good a motive must not be flung away, and all the way down the Charing Cross Road I turned the incident over in my mind. Fifteen years ago I could have made him an agent in the White Slave Traffic. It was a popular theme then; every young girl who came up to London looked round at Paddington apprehensively for the kindly old lady who would ask her if she was new to these parts. Yes, fifteen years ago it would have been a moving story. But, during the last fifteen years, Villiers Street has become placarded with shilling descriptions of “Why Girls Go Wrong”; and the Bishop of London has written a great many prefaces and preached a great many sermons. The White Slave Traffic is _vieux jeu_. Still, there was something in the seduction _motif_. “Yes, certainly,” I said to myself, as I presented my season-ticket at the barrier at Victoria and walked down the platform in search of a corner-seat; something might be made out of it: and by the time we had reached Selhurst a story had begun to form itself in my mind. She had come up from the provinces for the day, and had met an old friend of hers who had asked her out to dinner; she had intended to catch the last train home. The man is smitten by her beauty and wonders how he can best possess it. Should he steal her money she will be unable to buy a ticket back.