The northern express had deposited its passengers at King's Cross on time. All the station approaches were crowded with hurrying passengers. Taxicabs and "growlers" were mixed in apparently inextricable confusion. There was a roaring babble of instruction and counter-instruction from police-men, from cab drivers, and from excited porters. Some of the passengers hurried swiftly across the broad asphalt space and disappeared down the stairs toward the underground station. Others waited for unpunctual friends with protesting and frequent examination of their watches. One alone seemed wholly bewildered by the noise and commotion. She was a young girl not more than eighteen, and she struggled with two or three brown paper parcels, a hat-box, and a bulky hand-bag. She was among those who expected to be met at the station, for she looked helplessly at the clock and wandered from one side of the building to the other till at last she came to a standstill in the center, put down all her parcels carefully, and, taking a letter from a shabby little bag, opened it and read. Evidently she saw something which she had not noticed before, for she hastily replaced the letter in the bag, scrambled together her parcels, and walked swiftly out of the station. Again she came to a halt and looked round the darkened courtyard. "Here!" snapped a voice irritably. She saw a door of a taxicab open, and came toward it timidly. "Come in, come in, for heaven's sake!" said the voice. She put in her parcels and stepped into the cab. The owner of the voice closed the door with a bang, and the taxi moved on. "I've been waiting here ten minutes," said the man in the cab. "I'm so sorry, dear, but I didn't read--" "Of course you didn't read," interrupted the other brusquely. It was the voice of a young man not in the best of tempers, and the girl, folding her hands in her lap, prepared for the tirade which she knew was to follow her act of omission. "You never seem to be able to do anything right," said the man. "I suppose it is your natural stupidity." "Why couldn't you meet me inside the station?" she asked with some show of spirit. "I've told you a dozen times that I don't want to be seen with you," said the man brutally. "I've had enough trouble over you already. I wish to Heaven I'd never met you." The girl could have echoed that wish, but eighteen months of bullying had cowed and all but broken her spirit. "You are a stone around my neck," said the man bitterly. "I have to hide you, and all the time I'm in a fret as to whether you will give me away or not. I am going to keep you under my eye now," he said. "You know a little too much about me." "I should never say a word against you," protested the girl. "I hope, for your sake, you don't," was the grim reply. The conversation slackened from this moment until the girl plucked up courage to ask where they were going.