passengers, the woman, too, appeared interested in the distant landscape.
She might have been looking at the only other occupant of the platform.
The passengers, from where they sat, could not have told.

As he stood there,--against the background of the primitive, many-colored
landscape,--the young man might easily have attracted the attention of
any one. He would have attracted attention in a crowd. Tall, with an
athletic trimness of limb, a good breadth of shoulder, and a fine head
poised with that natural, unconscious pride of the well-bred--he kept his
feet on the unsteady platform of the car with that easy grace which marks
only well-conditioned muscles, and is rarely seen save in those whose
lives are sanely clean.

The Express had entered the yards at the summit station, and was gradually
lessening its speed. Just as the man turned to enter the car, the train
came to a full stop, and the sudden jar threw him almost into the arms of
the woman. For an instant, while he was struggling to regain his balance,
he was so close to her that their garments touched. Indeed, he only
prevented an actual collision by throwing his arm across her shoulder and
catching the side of the car window against which she was leaning.

In that moment, while his face was so close to hers that she might have
felt his breath upon her cheek and he was involuntarily looking straight
into her eyes, the man felt, queerly, that the woman was not shrinking
from him. In fact, one less occupied with other thoughts might have
construed her bold, open look, her slightly parted lips and flushed
cheeks, as a welcome--quite as though she were in the habit of having
handsome young men throw themselves into her arms.

Then, with a hint of a smile in his eyes, he was saying, conventionally,