the window and knelt on the cushioned seat, leaning far out to get
a better view, a long whistle screamed through the station,
followed by a quick series of dull, clanking sounds; then there was
a slight jerk, and my train moved on. Luckily the window was
narrow, being the one over the seat, beside the door, or I believe
I would have jumped out of it then and there. In an instant the
speed increased, and I was being carried swiftly away in the
opposite direction from the thing I loved.

For a quarter of an hour I lay back in my place, stunned by the
suddenness of the apparition. At last one of the two other
passengers, a large and gorgeous captain of the White Konigsberg
Cuirassiers, civilly but firmly suggested that I might shut my
window, as the evening was cold. I did so, with an apology, and
relapsed into silence. The train ran swiftly on for a long time,
and it was already beginning to slacken speed before entering
another station, when I roused myself and made a sudden resolution.
As the carriage stopped before the brilliantly lighted platform, I
seized my belongings, saluted my fellow-passengers, and got out,
determined to take the first express back to Paris.

This time the circumstances of the vision had been so natural that
it did not strike me that there was anything unreal about the face,
or about the woman to whom it belonged. I did not try to explain
to myself how the face, and the woman, could be traveling by a fast
train from Berlin to Paris on a winter's afternoon, when both were
in my mind indelibly associated with the moonlight and the
fountains in my own English home. I certainly would not have
admitted that I had been mistaken in the dusk, attributing to what
I had seen a resemblance to my former vision which did not really