The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig Part 40

Craig seized the handbags. "Come on, my dear!" he cried, getting into rapid motion.

She sat still.

He was at the door. "Come on," he said.

She looked appealingly, helplessly round that empty, lonely, strange station, its lights dim, its suggestions all inhospitable. "He has me at his mercy," she said to herself, between anger and despair. "How can I refuse to go without becoming the laughing-stock of the whole world?"

"Come on--Rita!" he cried. The voice was aggressive, but his face was deathly pale and the look out of his eyes was the call of a great loneliness. And she saw it and felt it. She braced herself against it; but a sob surged up in her throat--the answer of her heart to his heart's cry of loneliness and love.

"Chicago Express!" came in the train-caller's warning roar from behind her, as if the room were crowded instead of tenanted by those two only.

"All aboard!... Hurry up, lady, or you'll get left!"

Get left!... Left!--the explosion of that hoa.r.s.e, ominous voice seemed to blow Mrs. Joshua Craig from the seat, to sweep her out through the door her husband was holding open, and into the train for their home.

THE END