Slaney recovered herself on the verge of looking aghast. Major Bunbury kept his eyes away from the neighbourhood of hers, and with almost excessive carelessness made inquiries as to the hour at which the mail train was due at Letter Kyle. It appeared that there remained forty-five minutes before it arrived there, and that the usual time required by the ballast-engine for the distance was an hour and a quarter. Possibilities spread and soaked coldly through Slaney’s mind, like suddenly spilt water. Situations in novels that she had read lent their smooth probability to the raw and disjointed circumstance; she found herself wondering that it was all so horribly painful, so ugly, so devoid of subtle psychological interest and large bearing; not realizing that in actual life feeling is born first, help-less as a blind puppy, and philosophy is not born at all, but is built, with infinite self-consciousness. She was already on the engine--it was moving; she was holding on to an iron rail as she stood, and was not unaware that it was spoiling her gloves. Major Bunbury’s conversation with the engine-driver had ended with an almost imperceptible glide of the latter’s hand into his trousers pocket, and Major Bunbury himself was standing beside Slaney in the cramped space available for them, looking preternaturally cheerful and unaffected. He possessed that gift of trivial observation that is the parent of tact and is one of the rarest of male attributes. It can be formidable, it can also be attractive beyond most other things. He hardly looked at Slaney, who was gazing straight ahead through the bull’s-eye windows, but he knew that what she saw was not so much the wide tumbling waste of moor with its skirting mountains, as the creations of her own unsophisticated sus-picion. The pace of the engine increased momently, from a tremulous glide to a clattering rush; every movement of the driver’s hand as he heightened the speed was answered by a forward start, like a powerful horse touched with the spur--unhampered by carriage or tender it raced and swung. Slaney held on with both hands, while the wind from the open sides encircled and buffeted her, ardent with heat snatched from the engine fire, bitter with the frost that had turned the bog drain into mirrors for the keen colours of a winter sunset. There was not as yet a signal worked on the line; they must trust to eyesight and pluck for the safety of an engine driven at nearly its best speed; and the strident shriek tore the air incessantly, and each curve or cutting meant a slackening and an instant of suspense before the long vista opened clear, and they were away again with that living bound that thrilled Slaney’s unaccustomed heart as only pace can thrill. She began to understand that they were racing against time and luck to intercept--what? Could it be to foil the insane impulse of a woman who had lost her head in the terrible discovery that she had a heart?