"So wore on the daylight hours. Dusk came early, and after the lamps were lit first one and then the other of my girls wrapped herself in her shawl, and cuddling together on one seat with the head of each on the other's shoulders, they both dropped asleep. He and I were now sitting side by side. For a long time neither spoke. I persistently stared out of the window at the flying landscape, almost invisible now in the increasing darkness; but I could feel, though I did not even glance at him, that he had turned in his seat, his elbow resting on the back of it, his cheek on his hand and his eyes on me. At length he bent over toward me, and in so low a tone of voice that the girls could scarce have heard it had they been awake he whispered, 'Will you permit me to say a few words to you?'
"'I have no objection,' I answered coldly—'always with the proviso that what you have to say to me is something which it will be no derogation of my dignity as a mother of grown daughters to hear.'
"'Could you, madam, for a moment believe me capable of saying anything unworthy you, unworthy myself?' he exclaimed reproachfully. 'Oh no: I do not think I have given you any cause to believe me other than a gentleman. I am not in search of a love-affair, believe me, nor have I hitherto been considered as at all of an impressionable nature. I am perhaps not quite so young as I look, and certainly the opportunity of meeting beautiful and fascinating women has not been lacking to me. I know scores of such, and still I have borne hitherto an unoccupied heart. Now, I— But I am tongue-tied: I fear to give offence. I know very well you would not let me tell you that you have inspired in me one of those passions which, born in an instant, often shape a whole destiny—that I love you as fondly as a man ever loved a woman. No, no, do not stop me. I say that I do not make such assertions, because I know you would not allow me; but there is one thing I will make bold to do—one favor I must crave at your hands. Will you grant it?'
"'What is it?'
"'This: that you will let me count myself among your friends. Give me that foothold, and something I feel here in my innermost heart tells me that by it I may lift myself to a niche in yours which no other man now fills. Let time try the sincerity of what I say. All I ask of you is that if I ever come to Hurville (as I surely shall if I'm alive), you will allow me to call upon you merely as a friend: I ask no more.'
"'Are you sincere in this wish?'
"'As Heaven is my judge, I am. In less than an hour this train will arrive at the station where, in all probability, we shall have to part. I cannot endure to think that in a formal shake of the hand at a railway-dépôt you and I are going to separate, never perhaps to meet in this world again. Both of us have made plenty of such impromptu acquaintances before now, and have seen the end of them approach with the utmost indifference, and never given another thought to these chance friendships of a passing hour. But I feel in my innermost heart that this meeting between you and me was brought about by the hand of Providence itself, and for a purpose that we at this early stage of our knowledge of each other cannot divine. I will not, I cannot, see it fade away. Will you give me leave to come and see you at Hurville?'
"'With pleasure,' I replied.
"He sprang to my side as I assented, pressing against me so closely that I withdrew myself hastily lest it should become an open embrace. Yet even as I repulsed him he smiled fondly on me and said in a tender voice, 'Thank you, my friend: this is all I ask. I shall soon see you again, and I warn you I shall see you often. I am willing to take my chances for the future. Time will try me.'
"'Come, come!' I answered: 'these hints and insinuations are mere folly. It would be disingenuous in me to pretend not to understand them; but let them stop here: let us banish all nonsense. I am older than yourself by some years, and when you become better acquainted with me you will find that there is nothing in the least extraordinary about me. I am simply a middle-aged, might even be called an old, woman, wrapped up in a pleasant but very unromantic set of friends, and with all the love of my nature buried in the grave of a dead past, except what survives in the persons of those two sizable young ladies who sit nodding opposite.'