A Woman Scorned
JANE afterward told us just what happened in that compartment of the carrier, and I think that for the continuity of my narration I had best relate it now.
The cubby room was small, not much over six feet wide, and twelve feet long. There was a single small door to the corridor, and two small windows. A couch stood by them; there were two low chairs, and a small bench-like table.
Tolla made Jane as comfortable as possible. Food was at hand; Tolla, after an hour or two served it at the little table, eating the meal with Jane, and sitting with her on the couch where they could gaze through the windows.
To Jane this girl of another world was at once interesting, surprising and baffling. Jane could only look upon her as an enemy. In Jane’s mind there was no thought save that we must escape, and frustrate Tako’s attack upon New York; and she was impulsive, youthful enough to think something might be contrived.
At all events, she saw Tolla in the light of an enemy who might be tricked into giving information.
Jane admits that her ideas were quite as vague as our own when it came to planning anything definite.
She at first studied Tolla, who seemed as young as herself and perhaps in her own world, was as beautiful. And within an hour or two she was surprised at Tolla’s friendliness. They had dined together, gazed through the windows at the speeding shadows of the strange world sliding past; they had dozed together on the couch. During all this they could have been schoolgirl friends. Not captor and captive upon these strange weird circumstances of actuality, but friends of one world. And in outward aspect Tolla could fairly well have been a cultured girl of our Orient.
THEN Jane got a shock. She tried careful questions. And Tolla skillfully avoided everything that touched in any way upon Tako’s future plans. Yet her apparent friendliness, and a certain girlish volubility continued.
And then, at one point, Tolla asked: