They walked the platform up and down in front of the section-house. They were watched, but Ludovic did not care for that now. "Will you take my arm?" She hesitated, in amused consideration of her own inexperience. "Why, I never _did_ take any one's arm that I remember. I don't think I could keep step with thee." The intimate pronoun slipped out unawares. "I will keep step with _thee_." "I don't know that I quite like to hear you use that word." "But you used it, just now, to me." "It was an accident, then." "Your father says 'thee' to me." "He is of an older generation; my mother wore the Friends' dress. But those customs had a religious meaning for them to which I cannot pretend. With me it is a sort of instinct; I can't explain it, nor yet quite ignore it." "Have I offended that particular instinct of yours which attaches to the word 'thee'?" He seemed deeply chagrined. He was one who did not like to make mistakes, and he had no time to waste in apologizing and recovering lost ground. "People do say it to us sometimes in fun, not knowing what the word means to us," said Phebe. In the fresh winter air she was regaining her tone--escaping from him, Ludovic felt, into her own sweet, calm self-possession. "Then you distinctly refuse me whatever--the least--that word implies? I am one of those who 'rush in'?" "Oh, no; but you are much too serious. It is partly a habit of speech; we cannot lose the habit of speaking to each other as strangers in three days." "You were never a stranger to me. I knew you from the first moment I saw you; yet each moment since you have been a fresh surprise." "I cannot keep up with you," she said, slipping her hand out of his arm. In the grasp of his passionate dream he was striding along regardless, not of her, but of her steps. "Oh, little steps," he groaned within himself--"oh, little doubting steps, why did we not meet before?" Oh, blessed hampering steps, how much safer would his have gone beside them! "What a charming pair!" cried a lady passenger from the forward sleeper. She too was walking, with her husband, and her eye had been instantly taken by the gentle girl with the delicate wild-rose color, halting on the arm of a splendid youth with dare-devil eyes, who did not look as happy as he ought with that sweet creature on his arm. "Isn't it good to know that the old stories are going on all the same?" said the sentimental traveler. "What do you say--will that story end in happiness?" "I say that he isn't good enough for her," the husband replied. "Then he'll be sure to win her," laughed the lady. "He has won her, I believe," she added more seriously, watching the pair where they stood together at the far end of the platform; "but something is wrong." "Something usually is at that stage, if I remember. Come, let us get aboard."