III.
A very lanky and gawky lad was waiting in the railway station at the junction. He was loose-jointed and ill at ease in any position. His clothes were mean and old and badly kept. His face was sad. For some time now he had been waiting and he had hours of waiting before him. He had looked over and over at everything in sight. Then a train came up and a party of smartly dressed and handsome young men and women entered. The lad’s face flamed. Jack had not seen Milly for years. His father and mother were dead. He had to work at hard and uncongenial things to make his living. He had as yet no self-confidence and while he saw dimly a hope of better prospects, neither to himself nor to his employers was anything apparent that made his lot easier. Milly was a very lovely girl now. She was perfectly dressed and the centre of a merry party. The boy watched her hungrily, but she never glanced toward him. Her friends amused themselves in various ways, but it seemed to the onlooker that Milly was the soul of each diversion. After a while she took out a pair of scissors and began cutting out figures from paper. Jack recalled with a fresh pang the hours he and she had spent so. She had a newspaper and cut out large and small shapes, of men and women, of animals and other more difficult subjects, all with so neat an eye for form and so keen an appreciation of what was striking that her audience were carried away with admiration and delight, and one or two who had never seen her do it before were amazed beyond any powers of expression which they possessed. Their train came before Jack’s and they rose, bustling, to go out. Milly’s dark scornful-browed brother was with her and had stared at Jack sarcastically. Milly had shown no sign of seeing him. The paper she had was full of big advertisements and one sheet bore only six words on a side, in broad black letters. Just as she stood up she cut out something, while the rest were gathering up their belongings, and held it under her thumb against a gaudily covered novel she carried in her left hand. As she passed Jack she did not look at him, but he saw the thumb of her glove move and a silhouette of an inky black kitten fluttered down upon his knee. He took it up and stared at it. Then he saw her look back at him from the door.