had wasted looking-glasses on the walls of a railway coach;
now he was thinking of him as a far-sighted man.

The first page of his paper was fairly alive with fresh and
important dispatches, chiefly foreign. At length, after allowing
himself to become really interested in a Paris dispatch of some
international consequence, he turned his eyes again to the
mirror. She was leaning slightly forward, holding the open book
in her lap, but reading, with straining eyes, an article in the
paper he held.

He calmly turned to the next page and looked leisurely over it.
Another glance, quickly taken, showed to him a disappointed frown
on the pretty face and a reluctant resumption of novel reading.
A few moments later he turned back to the first page, holding the
paper in such a position that she could not see, and, full of
curiosity, read every line of the foreign news, wondering what
had interested her.

Under ordinary circumstances Lorry would have offered her the
paper, and thought nothing more of it. With her, however, there
was an air that made him hesitate. He felt strangely awkward and
inexperienced beside her; precedents did not seem to count. He
arose, tossed the paper over the back of the chair as if casting
it aside forever, and strolled to the opposite window and looked
out for a few moments, jingling his coins carelessly. The jingle
of the pieces suggested something else to him. His paper still
hung invitingly, upside down, as he had left it, on the chair,
and the lady was poring over her novel. As he passed her he drew
his right hand from his pocket and a piece of money dropped to