speaking earnestly across the table, her profile turned to me. I
had noticed casually her earnest manner, her somber clothes, and the
great mass of odd, bronze-colored hair on her neck. But suddenly
she glanced toward me and the utter hopelessness--almost tragedy
--of her expression struck me with a shock. She half closed her
eyes and drew a long breath, then she turned again to the man across
the table.

Neither one was eating. He sat low in his chair, his chin on his
chest, ugly folds of thick flesh protruding over his collar. He
was probably fifty, bald, grotesque, sullen, and yet not without
a suggestion of power. But he had been drinking; as I looked, he
raised an unsteady hand and summoned a waiter with a wine list.

The young woman bent across the table and spoke again quickly. She
had unconsciously raised her voice. Not beautiful, in her
earnestness and stress she rather interested me. I had an idle
inclination to advise the waiter to remove the bottled temptation
from the table. I wonder what would have happened if I had? Suppose
Harrington had not been intoxicated when he entered the Pullman car
Ontario that night!

For they were about to make a journey, I gathered, and the young
woman wished to go alone. I drank three cups of coffee, which
accounted for my wakefulness later, and shamelessly watched the
tableau before me. The woman's protest evidently went for nothing:
across the table the man grunted monosyllabic replies and grew more
and more lowering and sullen. Once, during a brief unexpected
pianissimo in the music, her voice came to me sharply: