What would be the future? By any chance like this woman's life? Would the day come when she would sell herself for a gown and a bracelet, thrown at her with a man's contemptuous word? Was marriage very widely different from such a union? Was not she selling herself? Might not the man she was waiting for go the way of so many others of his type, drink and coarsen and tell her to go to the devil? She longed for the sun, but not a gleam pierced the leaden sky; she sought in her soul for a ray of light, but none came. At last with a shriek and a billowing plume of smoke the down train emerged from the tunnel. Norma set her face in its calm ironic mask and waited for the train to draw up. Only two passengers alighted, Morland and his man. Morland came to her with smiling looks and grasped her by the hand. “You are looking more beautiful than ever,” he whispered, bringing his face close to hers. She started back as if she had been struck. The fumes of brandy were in his breath. Her hideous forebodings were in process of fulfilment. “The whole station will hear you,” she said coldly, turning away. The Imp of Mischance rubbed his hands gleefully at his contrivance. Morland, a temperate man, had merely felt chilly after an all-night's journey, and, more out of idleness than from a desire for alcohol, had foolishly taken a sip out of his brandy flask a moment or two before, when he was putting up his hand-bag. Norma collected herself, summoned with bitter cynicism her common-sense to her aid, and made smiling amends for her shrewish remark. She suffered him to kiss her on the drive home, and strove not to despise herself. Chapter XI--DANGER