AFTER MRS. DALLAS had said good-bye to Laurel, she retraced her steps along the narrow platform beside the train, and immediately sought refuge in the ladies’ public dressing-room in the station. Standing in front of the long horizontal mirror with the row of wash-basins beneath, she removed her hat and veil, and leaning forward drew one of the basins full of steaming water. With her bare hands she bathed her smarting eyes and smeared cheeks. The hot water was as soothing as hot soup to a sore throat. She dried her face and hands on a piece of crêpe paper from a roll near by. Afterward, opening a little red leather case which she always carried with her, she laid it before her on the washstand, first blowing into it, once or twice, to remove a little of the loose pink powder that had shaken out of its container, and was as thick as dust in a carpet-sweeper.

Briskly, in a business-like fashion, Mrs. Dallas proceeded to remedy the damage wrought by her tears, working dexterously with various little sticks and tubes, without any attempt at concealment, apparently without the slightest self-consciousness, although just beside her a prim, school-teacherish-looking little woman, middle-aged, observed her operations with interest. Just when her cheeks presented their customary velvety appearance, her eyes suddenly welled up again with tears. She closed the lids tight. No use. The tears oozed out, streaked her cheeks again.

“Oh, darn it!” she whispered into the hollow of her hands as she pressed her fingers hard against her eyeballs. “Oh, Lollie, Lollie, darn it, darn it!”

Twice she was forced to repeat her operations, and at last gave up on the struggle for perfection, satisfying herself with a bit of powder on her nose, trusting that the white veil would suffice to conceal her.

She had planned to spend an hour or two in the shops, take a sandwich and a cup of coffee in a candy-shop a little later, and go to a movie afterward. It was wholly by accident that she ran across Alfred Munn.

The route she selected to the shops carried her through the outskirts of the wholesale merchandise district of the city. Alfred Munn’s present business had something to do with leather or hides—or was it cotton—something of the sort. She ran across Alfred Munn (or rather he ran across her—he saw her before she saw him) at a restaurant.

It had occurred to Stella as she walked away from the station that a cup of coffee would probably help to brace her up better than anything else, and, as it was really time for lunch anyhow, she decided to drop into a certain restaurant she knew about, instead of the candy-shop farther downtown. It was a restaurant where Alfred Munn had taken Laurel and her to lunch one day two years ago. She hadn’t seen him since. As she entered it, she observed that men predominated.