a grey uncertain morning of blown clouds found Ishmael and Killigrew
both seated in the train while she waved her handkerchief at them from a
receding platform. And if that handkerchief were to be wet with tears
that were not for her brother nor yet for Killigrew except in so far as
he had, with his gay tongue and sudden secret kisses, awakened hopes in
her that she was beginning to see, by his very nature, could have no
foundation, at least she let no one even guess at it. They were tears of
rage, almost as much with herself as him, and if Killigrew were never to
have had more upon his conscience than a light flirtation with this
ambitious and far from ignorant girl, there would have been little to
disturb his healthy slumbers. Vassie was not one to waste time over the
regrets that eat at the heart, and, though she could not altogether
stifle pain at the outset, her strong-set will made the inevitable
period of recurrent pangs shorter for her than for most. Killigrew had
played the game quite fairly according to his code; it was Vassie's
ignorance of any form of philandering beyond the crude interchange of
repartee and kisses of the young clerks she had hitherto met that had
made the playing of it unequal. She and Phoebe were both enacting the
oldest woman's part in the world--that of being left behind to wait; and
it was two very unwitting youths who left them. As the train gathered
speed on its long journey both Ishmael and Killigrew had their minds on
what lay before them, not on anything left behind.




CHAPTER VIII

NEW HORIZONS