On the platform of the Gare de l’Est, with ten minutes to spare before the departure of the Orient Express, Grey and O’Hara, with the fair Minna von Altdorf between them, strolled leisurely up and down beside the long and lugubrious train of wagons-lit. There was the usual bustle incident to the leaving of the great transcontinental flyer. Passengers were nervously seeking their locations; blue-overalled porters wheeling trucks piled high with trunks and boxes hurried towards the luggage vans, and others with smaller impedimenta in hand crowded on the narrow platforms of the cars and ran into the still smaller passageways upon which the compartments opened. English and American tourists unable to speak the language of the country were besieging the interpreters; friends and kinsfolk with lingering handshakes, effusive embraces, and180 kisses upon either cheek were bidding departing travellers farewell, and dapper-uniformed guards were at intervals repeating the stereotyped command: “En voiture, messieurs!” There was the distracting hissing of escaping steam, the shrill piping of whistles, the rumble and roar of arriving trains. And over all hung an atmosphere of intolerably humid heat.

O’Hara and the Fraülein were chatting animatedly, but Grey was still depressed and silent. The delay irritated him. He was impatient to be gone. For the hundredth time he was wondering whether he had said too much or too little in his letter to Hope Van Tuyl; wondering how she regarded it; whether she was still obdurate. He had not given her an address and there was no way in which she could communicate with him. He regretted this now. A word from her would be a talisman.

His memory of her as he had seen her yesterday at Versailles was very vivid. It was only a glimpse, but in that instant he had drunk in greedily the marvellous perfection of her beauty; and the picture had dwelt with him since. Sleeping181 and waking he could see the bronze dusk of her hair, the gentleness of her eyes, the softly flushed curve of her cheek, the tender sympathy of her mouth, the supple grace of her figure. The portrait was not new to him, to be sure—he had many times revelled in fond contemplation of those rare features—but absence had its usual effect, and it had been centuries, it seemed, since his vision had been so blessed. Against the dull, dun, grimy background of the railway station this radiant reflection was projected, clear and sharp. He saw her mentally just as he had seen her physically on the previous afternoon.

And as he gazed a miracle was wrought. For into and out of the image came and grew the reality, and he suddenly realised that she was standing before him, that in one hand he was holding his hat and that his other hand was clasping hers. All the sights and sounds of the platform died away, and he saw only her, more beautiful even than he had dreamed, her eyes alight with love, her lips smiling forgiveness.

O’Hara and the Fr?ulein had passed on, and he and the one woman in the world had drawn aside182 out of the hurry and scurry. A few steps away stood Marcelle, the maid, her interest decorously diverted.

“Oh, how good you are!” Grey was saying, his heart in his voice; “how very, very good you are!”

Her hand answered the ardent pressure of his.

“I just couldn’t let you go without seeing you,” she returned. “You cannot imagine what I have suffered. I tried to be brave—I tried so hard, dear; but I’m only a weak woman and my soul longed for you every minute.”

What bliss it was to hear her speak! It set the man’s pulses surging. His face was flushed and young and happy again, as it had not been since his awakening.

“The whole thing has been frightful,” he told her, clenching his teeth at the recollection. “You haven’t an idea what a net of circumstance has been thrown around me.”

“Yes,” she hastened, “I know—they told me you had been ill, irresponsible; that you had had brain fever or something, and—oh, Carey, why did you do that?” and she pointed to his beard.

183 He smiled grimly.

“I didn’t do it,” he answered, with emphasis. “You surely don’t think I’d be guilty of such a ridiculous transformation, do you?”

“But——”

“I’ll explain some day, dear heart,” he interrupted her, “but there isn’t time now; the train leaves in about five minutes, and I want all of that in which to tell you how very beautiful you are and how very, very much I love you.”

She wore a perfectly fitting gown of white with rich lace, and a large hat of pale blue with a circling ostrich plume of the same delicate tint. Her tall and shapely figure was quite unavoidably a little conspicuous, and a target for admiring glances.

“Leaves in five minutes?” she repeated, dolorously. “But I can’t let you go in five minutes. I have so much to say to you. It has been five months since I spoke to you. You must wait and take the next train—wait until tomorrow.”

“If only I might!” Grey replied, his eyes in hers. “If it could only be we should never part184 again, never! Ah, my own, how my arms ache for you!”

“But you can stay,” she urged. He was still holding her hand, and now she placed her other hand over his as she pleaded. “There is no reason why you shouldn’t. What difference will twenty-four hours make? Are you going for the King’s funeral? It is set for Friday, you know. We are thinking of going ourselves. Wait until tomorrow, and you and papa and I can go together.”

“But, my darling,” Grey protested, arguing against his inclination, “don’t you see that that would be quite impossible? Your father could not afford to be seen with me. I am a supposed fugitive from justice. He would be guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal,” and he smiled grimly again.

“What would he care?” the young woman demanded, airily. “He doesn’t believe you guilty. He knows you are not. He has said as much. I can’t let you go, dear; I can’t—I won’t.”

“Please, please don’t make it more difficult for me to part from you than it is already,” he begged.185 “You know how much I long to have you with me, and yet another day’s delay might ruin everything. I should be in Kürschdorf at this very minute.”

Her eyes glistened and tears hung on her lashes.

“Why?” she asked, simply.

“All my hopes of undoing the wrong that has been done me lie in that direction,” he answered, gravely. “It was a conspiracy, dear, involving men high in the Budavian government. The work of unmasking them will grow more difficult with each hour it is put off.”

She gazed at him in sudden alarm.

“You are going into danger,” she murmured. Her voice trembled. Anxiety was in her tone. She pressed his hands nervously, convulsively. “Tell me the truth. You are, aren’t you?”

Grey laughed to reassure her.

“Not a bit, my darling,” he answered, with an assumption of nonchalance; “the whole affair can, I think, be adjusted most peacefully.”

For a moment she was silent, her eyes reading his thoughts.

“I’m going with you,” she exclaimed, suddenly.

186 Grey stared at her in surprise.

“I only wish you could,” he said, refusing to take her seriously, “but I don’t see just how——”

“I’m going,” she interrupted, determinedly. “I shan’t be in the least in your way, that I promise. But I’m going. I refuse to be left behind.”

“En voiture, messieurs et mesdames!”

The guard’s command had grown imperative. The second bell had rung.

Grey pulled out his watch. It showed thirty seconds of starting time. O’Hara was standing at the car&rsq............