At the hotel I packed my belongings and left them so that they could be sent after me in case I should not return. I might be back the next morning; but then I might never come back at all. I thought of those villagers who from idle curiosity followed the carriage of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette as it drove out of Varennes, some of them never to see their native town again till they had been dragged over half the battle-fields of Europe. Like them I had no prevision as to where I was going or what was to become of me. I knew only--gloatingly, and with a kind of glory in the fact--that I was going at the call of Larry Strangways, to do his bidding, because he believed in me. But that thought, too, I tried to put out of my mind. In as far as it was in my mind I did my best to express it in terms of prose, seeing myself not as the heroine of a mysterious romance--a view to which I was inclined--but as a practical business woman, competent, up-to-date, and unafraid. I was afraid, mortally afraid, and I was neither up-to-date nor competent; but the fiction sustained me while I packed my trunks and sent a telegram to Hugh. This last I did only when it was too late for him to answer or intercept me. "Called suddenly out of town," I wrote. "May lead to a new place. Will write or wire as soon as possible." Having sent this off at half past four, I took a taxicab for the station. My instructions were so far carried out successfully that, with a colored porter wearing a red cap to precede me, I was the first to pass the barrier leading to the train, and the first to take my seat in the long, narrow parlor-car. My chair was two from the end toward the entrance and exit. Once enthroned within its upholstered depths I watched for strange occurrences. But I watched in vain. For a time I saw nothing but the straight, empty cavern of the car. Then a colored porter, as like to my own as one pea to another, came puffing his way in, dragging valises and other impedimenta, and followed by an old gentleman and his wife. These the porter installed in chairs toward the middle of the car, and, touching his cap on receipt of his tip, made hastily for the door. Similar arrivals came soon after that, with much stowing of luggage into overhead racks, and kisses, and injunctions as to conduct, and farewells. Within my range of vision were two elderly ladies, a smartly dressed young man, a couple in the disillusioned, surly stage, a couple who had recently been married, a clergyman, a youth of the cheap sporting type. To one looking for the solution of a mystery the material was not promising.