"Perhaps not. I have dreamt it. But I do not presume to inquire where
you are going, and I myself am certainly not bound for Naples. But if
I can be of no further use to you I will make my bow. It is time for
me to get back to the train, and for my part I don't in the least want
to lose the Engadine express."

She got up too, and walked out of the buffet by my side.

"I shall go on, at any rate as far as Boulogne," she volunteered,
without my asking the question; and we got into our car together, she
entering her compartment and I mine. I heard her door bang, but I kept
mine still open.

I smoked many cigarettes pondering over the curious episode and my new
acquaintance. How was I to class her? A young man would have sworn she
was perfectly straight, that there could be no guile in this
sweet-faced, gentle, well-mannered woman; and I, with my greater
experience of life and the sex, was much tempted to do the same. It
was against the grain to condemn her as all bad, a depredator, a woman
with perverted moral sense who broke the law and did evil things.

But what else could I conclude from the words I had heard drop from
her own lips, strengthened and confirmed as they were by the
incriminating language of her companion?

"Bother the woman and her dark blue eyes. I wish I'd never come across
her. A fine thing, truly, to fall in love with a thief. I hope to
heaven she will really leave the train at Boulogne; we ought to be
getting near there by now."