Margaret Danvers stepped aboard the southern-bound sleeper at Chicago one stormy March evening, and as she walked composedly to her berth in the middle of the car, the eyes of every person present were riveted upon her. She wore a closely fitting garment of Russian sable, which enveloped her completely, and a large beaver hat with drooping plumes, and from the single fine diamond flashing at her throat to the tips of her dainty Suéde boots she looked the model of a fashionable beauty. She was the only woman on the car, and before she had fairly settled herself comfortably, all the men had mentally pronounced their opinion of her looks and style, and hazarded a conjecture as to her age. Her attendant, a florid man of middle age, received the slight degree of attention
justified by his seeming only an adjunct of the moment. As he left her, he put into her hands a bunch of costly roses, which she received with a smile and laid upon the opposite seat the instant he was gone.
Of the score of passengers, two or three knew her by sight, for she was, in a way, a public character, but, as it happened, none were really acquainted with her, and before long even those most deeply interested in her appearance yielded to the apathy peculiar to sleeping-cars, and subsided into their newspapers or their rugs, preparing to wear out the evening until bedtime.
Margaret amused herself in watching the flying snow and in reverie. Too used to traveling to even care to look about her, she yielded to the prevailing somnambulistic influence just enough to dream without sleeping. At first there was in her mind a confusion of events past, present, and to come. Incidents of no importance mingled with greater ones, and her reflections became mixed with little fanciful suggestions of things long since forgotten, or, rather, voluntarily put out of mind. She tried to think of her career, to recall her triumphs, and to dwell upon the possibilities of the future. She told herself that music was her life, that all she had to do with was the beautiful and the divine in art, and that the everyday existence she had struggled to rise above was henceforth nothing more than an unpleasant memory.
At twenty-eight she was her own mistress, earning an independent income through the use of her beautiful voice. The teaching days and the drudgery of the class-room had passed, and as a concert singer she was favorably known in more than one western city noted for its critical taste. After a successful winter in Milwaukee and Chicago, she was now upon her way to fulfil an engagement in Baltimore, which promised more than anything in which she had yet engaged. She was in the heyday of her powers, admired, in radiant health, conscious of her beauty and talent, and entirely satisfied with life. What did it mean that, as she looked from the window with a proud smile upon her lips, some tantalizing thoughts should intrude themselves, and the mind so entirely self-poised should feel, for the first time in years, the weakening influence of some emotional fancies? It was her boast that she was never lonely, never sad, that her whole heart was in the work.
The conductor passed through taking tickets, and brought her back to the present. And after this came the little stir of the porter making up the berths, and she moved to the end of the car. In front two men were talking.
"Never saw a promise of a worse storm," said one. "Shouldn't wonder if the tracks were blocked a little ahead."
"Comes from the southwest," suggested the other. "If necessary, they'll put on another locomotive. We're bound to get through at any rate on this train; that's one comfort."
By nine o'clock Margaret, enveloped in a downy wrapper of dark red, lay courting sleep in her section. Over her was spread the fur ulster, none too warm above the blankets, even for her warm blood. The thermometer outside would have registered zero, and whiffs of icy air found their way every now and then into the car. Everything was quiet save her thoughts, which began to utter themselves with loud, importunate voices, as if answering some call without, independent of her control. "I have happily been able to say all my life that I didn't know what nerves were," said Margaret to herself, "but I begin to think that from some inexplicable cause I am nervous."