I had never felt so stupidly helpless in my life. There were a thousand things I wished to say to her; there were countless questions I wished to ask; but her calmness and poise were disconcerting. She had not, apparently, the slightest curiosity about me; and there was no reason why she should have—I knew that well enough! Her eyes met mine easily; their azure depths puzzled me. She was almost, but not quite, some one I had seen before, and it was not my woodland Olivia. Her eyes, the soft curve of her cheek, the light in her hair, but the memory of another time, another place, another girl, lured only to baffle me.

She laughed,—a little murmuring laugh.

“I’ll never tell if you won’t,” she said.

“But I don’t see how that helps me with you ?”

“It certainly does not ! That is a much more serious matter, Mr. Glenarm. ”

“And the worst of it is that I haven’t a single thing to say for myself. It wasn’t the not knowing that was so utterly stupid—”

“Certainly not ! It was talking that ridiculous twadale. It was trying to flirt with a silly school-girl. What will do for fifteen is somewhat vacuous for—”

She paused abruptly, colored and laughed.

“I am twenty-seven !”

“And I am just the usual age, ” she said.

“Ages don’t count, but time is important. There are many things I wish you’d tell me,—you who hold the key of the gate of mystery.”

“Then you’ll have to pick the lock !”

She laughed lightly. The somber Sisters patrolling the platform with their charges heeded us little.

“I had no idea you knew Arthur Pickering—when you were just Olivia in the tam-o’-shanter.”

“Maybe you think he wouldn’t have cared for my acquaintance—as Olivia in the tam-o’-shanter. Men are very queer !”

“But Arthur Pickering is an old friend of mine.”

“So he told me.”

“We were neighbors in our youth.”

“I believe I have heard him mention it.”

“And we did our prep school together, and then parted !”

“You tell exactly the same story, so it must be true. He went to college and you went to Tech.”

“And you knew him—?” I began, my curiosity thoroughly aroused.

“Not at college, any more than I knew you at Tech.”

“The train’s coming, I said earnestly, “and I wish you would tell me—when I shall see you again !”

“Before we part for ever ?” There was a mischievous hint of the Olivia in short skirts in her tone.

“Please don’t suggest it ! Our times have been strange and few. There was that first night, when you called to me from the lake.”

“How impertinent ! How dare you—remember that ?”

“And there was that other encounter at the chapel porch. Neither you nor I had the slightest business there. I admit my own culpability.”

She colored again.