"I often think how silly people are," he said, "not to talk in railway carriages. One can't read without blinding oneself. I've seen women knit, but that's unspeakable. Many a time in frosty, foggy weather, when the South Eastern has taken two hours to get from Cannon Street to Blackheath, I've looked round the carriage and wanted to say, 'Gentlemen, seeing that we are thus delayed, let us each contribute to the general hilarity by telling a story--we might gather them into a Christmas number afterwards--in the manner of the late Mr. Charles Dickens,' then I've looked round the carriage full of city-centred people, and wondered how they'd deal with the lunatic who ventured to suggest such an All-the-year-round idea. But nobody could be city-centred on such a day, and so early. So let's talk." She had laughed, as he had meant her to laugh. Now she seemed to throw away some scruple in the gesture with which she shrugged her shoulders and turned to him. "Very well," she said, and she was smiling. "Only I've nothing to say." "Never mind; I have," he rejoined, and proceeded to say it. It seemed amusing to him as an experiment to talk to this girl, this perfect stranger, with a delicate candour that he would not have shown to his oldest friend. It seemed interesting to lay bare, save for a veiling of woven transparent impersonality, his inmost mind. It _was_ interesting, for the revelation drew her till they were talking together in a world where it seemed no more than natural for her to show him her soul: and she had no skill to weave veils for it. Such talk is rare: so rare and so keen a pleasure, indeed, as to leave upon one's life, if one be not a poet, a mark strong and never to be effaced. The slackening of the train at Halstead broke the spell which lay on both with a force equal in strength, if diverse in kind. "Oh!" she said, "I get out here. Good-bye, good-bye." He would not spoil the parting by banalities of hat-raising amid the group of friends or relations who would doubtless meet her. "Good-bye," he said, and his eyes made her take his offered hand. "Good-bye. I shall never forget you. Never!" And then it seemed to him that the farewell lacked fire: and he lifted her hand to his face. He did not kiss it. He laid it against his cheek, sighed, and dropped it. The action was delicate and very effective. It suggested the impulse, almost irresistible yet resisted, the well-nigh overwhelming longing to kiss the hand, kept in check by a respect that was almost devotion. She should have torn her hand away. She took it away gently, and went. Leisurely he got out of the train. She had disappeared. Well--the bright little interlude was over. Still, it would give food for dreams among the ferny woods. The first lines of a little song hummed themselves in his brain-- "Eyes like stars in the night of life, Seen but a moment and seen for ever."