When she had got it up he undid the woollen scarf round his neck and unbuttoned the top button of his overcoat. "At last," he said in a voice of relief, heaving an enormous sigh. He looked at her and smiled. Instantly she smiled back. Any shreds of self-consciousness she may have had clinging to her in her earlier days had been finally scraped off when Judith, that amazing piece of loveliness, came out. "Were you cold?" she asked, with the friendly interest of a boy. "Naturally. When windows are open one is always cold." "Oh!" said Ingeborg, who had never thought of that. She perceived from his speech that he was a foreigner. From the turned-down collar and white tie beneath his opened scarf she also was made aware that he was a minister of religion. "How they pursue me," she thought. Even here, even in a railway carriage reserved for Dent's excursionists only, one of them had filtered through. She also saw that he was of a drab complexion, and that his hair, drab, too, and close-cropped and thick, seemed to be made of beaver. "But that's what windows are _for_," she said, after reflecting on it. "No." The two large ladies let Shoolbred pause while they looked at each other. They considered Ingeborg's behaviour forward. She ought not to have spoken first. Impossible on a Dent's Tour not to make friends--indeed the social side of these excursions is the most important--but there are rules. The other end of the carriage had observed the rules. The two ladies hoped they had not joined anything not quite high-toned. The other end had carried out the rules with rigid _savoir-vivre_; had accidentally touched and trodden on; had apologised; had had its apologies accepted; had introduced and been introduced; and so had cleared the way to chocolates. "No?" repeated Ingeborg inquiringly. "The aperture was there first," said the German gentleman. "Of course," said Ingeborg, seeing he waited for her to admit it. "And in the fulness of the ages came man, and mechanically shut it." "Yes," said Ingeborg. "But--" "Consequently, the function of windows is to shut apertures." "Yes. But--" "And not to open that which, without them, was open already." "Y'es. But--" "It would be illogical," said the German gentleman patiently, "to contend that their function is to open that which, without them, was open already." Reassured by the word illogical, which was a nice word, well known to and quite within the spirit of a Dent's Tour, the two ladies went on with Shoolbred where they had left him off. "The first day I was in England I went about logically, and shut each single window in my boarding-house. I then discovered that this embittered the atmosphere around me." "It would thicken it," nodded Ingeborg, interested.