utterly banal individual, the husband.

"Let's go out and walk on the platform until the train starts," suggested
Honora, desperately. "Oh, Howard, the shades are up! I'm sure I saw some
one looking in!"

He laughed. But there was a light in his eyes that frightened her, and
she deemed his laughter out of place. Was he, after all, an utterly
different man than what she had thought him? Still laughing, he held to
her wrist with one hand, and with the other pulled down the shades.

"This is good enough for me," he said. "At last--at last," he whispered,
"all the red tape is over, and I've got you to myself! Do you love me
just a little, Honora?"

"Of course I do," she faltered, still struggling, her face burning as
from a fire.

"Then what's the matter?" he demanded.

"I don't know--I want air. Howard, please let me go. It's-it's so hot
inhere. You must let me go."

Her release, she felt afterwards, was due less to a physical than a
mental effort. She seemed suddenly to have cowed him, and his resistance
became enfeebled. She broke from him, and opened the door, and reached
the cement platform and the cold air. When he joined her, there was
something jokingly apologetic about his manner, and he was smoking a
cigarette; and she could not help thinking that she would have respected
him more if he had held her.