was able to ride all day in studious abstraction in his section of the
Chicago-New York Pullman, without so much as a glance for the young
woman in the modest gray traveling coat directly across the aisle.

She was well worth the glance, as he admitted willingly enough
afterward. She was the dainty type, with fluffy bright brown hair, eyes
the color of wood violets, a nose tilted to the precise angle of
bewitching piquancy, and the adorable mouth and chin familiarized to two
continents by the artistic pen of the Apostle of the American Girl. How
he could have ridden within arm's reach of her through all the daylight
hours of a long summer day remained as one of Ford's unanswered enigmas;
but it required an accident and a most embarrassing _contretemps_ to
make him aware of her existence.

The accident was one of the absurd sort. The call for dinner in the
dining-car had been given, and Ford was just behind the young woman in
the rear of the procession which filed forward out of the Pullman. The
train had at that moment left a way station, and the right-hand
vestibule door was still open and swinging disjointedly across the
narrow passage. Ford reached an arm past the young woman to fold the
two-leaved door out of her way. As he did it, the door-knob hooked
itself mischievously in the loop of her belt chatelaine, snatched it
loose, and flung it out into the backward-rushing night.

Whereupon: "Oh!--my purse!" with a little gasp of sudden bereavement,
and a quick turning to face the would-be helper.

Ford was honestly aghast when the situation fully enveloped him.

"Heavens and earth! Did you ever see such idiotic clumsiness!" he