For one thing, she was alive. Grey eyes, shrewd, keen and clear, looking out from under the brim of a hat that had a touch of smartness, seemed to absorb every detail of this film reeled off at the rate of sixty miles an hour. It was like the movies, but less exciting. Not that the traveller craved excitement. This trip to an unknown land was far from being a pleasure jaunt.
So intent were the grey eyes in absorbing a scene which was a good deal below expectation, that they were not content with the window against which her elbow pressed. Now and then they roved to the left across the narrow corridor, for a glimpse of the more distant view. Broadly speaking, this, too, was a washout. The mist, clammy and all-pervading, might have a lot to do with the general effect, but England, so far, was nothing to write home about.
Disappointment already loomed in a receptive mind, when a man appeared in the corridor. He gazed through the glass at the compartment’s sole occupant; then he came in and closed the door carefully. With a quiet air he took a corner seat immediately facing the girl. She had a feeling that she had seen him before; but where or in what circumstances she could not say. Indeed, so vague was her memory that she soon decided it was a mere reaction to the man’s striking personality.
He was not a man to forget. Big, handsome, muscular, clean and trim, he had all the snap of the smart New Yorker. Evidently he went to good tailors and he paid for dressing.
He raised his ten-dollar Stetson with an air of class. “Miss Durrance!”
The girl gave a start and coloured hotly.
“Don’t remember me, eh, Miss Durrance?”
It was clear that she didn’t. But he remembered her, and the calm enforcement of his knowledge in a tone near the familiar flecked the girl’s cheek with a picturesque confusion.
“Can’t say I do.”
At the awkward answer his eyes twinkled into a slow, bright smile. “Myself, I never forget a face or a name.”