Ralph considered for a few moments, then made up his mind. Those blue eyes were certainly worth a journey. Moreover it was in following those blue eyes that he had made the acquaintance of the green eyes; and it might be that by way of the English girl he might find the lady-killer and by way of the lady-killer come to the green eyes again.
He turned quickly and bought a ticket to Monte Carlo and hurried to the platform.
He saw the English girl step into the third compartment of car No. 5, slipped into the middle of a group and saw her, through the window, taking off her cloak.
There were but few passengers. It was some years before the war, the end of April, and this express, [[20]]without sleeping or restaurant car, was too uncomfortable to carry more than a few first-class passengers to the South. Ralph indeed only saw two, both men, who were in the compartment just in front of the one occupied by the English girl in car No. 5.
He strolled up and down the platform some distance from the car, hired two pillows, provided himself with a traveling library of papers and magazines, and when the whistle blew jumped on to the step, opened the door, and entered the third compartment of car No. 5 in the manner of a man who has caught the train by the skin of his teeth.
The English girl was alone in the corner by the window facing the engine; Ralph settled down, with his back to the engine, in the corner next to the corridor. She raised her eyes and glanced at the intruder, carelessly enough, and went on eating chocolates from the box open on her knee.
A conductor walked down the corridor and punched their tickets. The train rushed towards the outskirts; and the lights of Paris grew farther and farther between. Ralph ran his eye listlessly over the evening papers and since he found nothing to interest him in them, cast them aside.
“Nothing happening,” he said to himself. “Not even a sensational crime. How much more interesting is this young lady.”
The finding of one’s self alone in a small closed [[21]]compartment with a pretty unknown lady, of passing the night together and sleeping in the same compartment, had always appeared to him a rather diverting anomaly. But he saw no use in wasting time in reading magazines or in meditating or exchanging furtive glances. He moved to the middle of the seat. The English girl could not doubt that her traveling companion was about to speak to her, and, wholly unmoved, she neither seemed to avoid it nor to lend herself to it. The burden therefore of establishing relations fell upon Ralph alone. That did not worry him at all. In an infinitely respectful tone he said:
“However incorrectly I may be acting I should like to ask your permission to inform you of a fact which may be of importance to you. May I say a few words?”