He left her for a few minutes in the ladies’ waiting-room, and after he had seen her to the brilliantly lighted train and found her a seat, he handed back the purse.
“I took out fifteen cents, to telephone Mrs. Waring,” he carefully explained. “She will meet your train at Laurel. Now you are all right, aren’t you? You aren’t afraid to travel alone, are you? It’s less than an hour, you know.”
“But what about you, Ethan?” she wondered. “You’re coming, too, aren’t you?” and she instinctively made room for him beside her, as the train began slowly to glide out of the station.
“I can’t,” he answered, briefly. “Good night, Stella!” and next moment he had swung himself off the step and disappeared in the darkness.
It was seventeen miles through the whispering summer night to the little station where he had left his wheel. He reached it soon after the midnight freight, and found the station agent awake, mounted and rode the rest of the way home, where the first thing he did was to rummage in the pantry for the materials of a satisfactory supper, and the next, to go to bed and sleep ’round the clock.
“I couldn’t borrow from a girl, you know,” was all Ethan said, when questioned about his midnight tramp. “And besides, it was great. Such a lark!”
To himself he said: “I shall never forget the talking leaves, the wood smells, the company of the stars.”
Stella came fully to herself on the short ride home, and was all tender repentance and self-blame when she fell into the arms of her kind foster-mother, on the deserted platform, with the one arc-light shivering overhead.
“Oh, mother! I never thought you might be anxious. I never thought of people looking for me. I’m afraid I never thought of anything but the poor little sick baby—and Blue Earth in such trouble, among strange white people. I wanted to help.”