ticket, and grasping her uncounted change, pence and all, in her
little gloved hand, she found herself thrust, hap-hazard, at the
very last moment, into the last compartment of the last carriage
--alone--with an artist.

Now, you and I, to be sure, most proverbially courteous and
intelligent reader, might never have guessed at first sight, from
the young man's outer aspect, the nature of his occupation. The
gross and clumsy male intellect, which works in accordance with
the stupid laws of inductive logic, has a queer habit of requiring
something or other, in the way of definite evidence, before it
commits itself offhand to the distinct conclusion. But Elma Clifford
was a woman; and therefore she knew a more excellent way. HER habit
was, rather to look things once fairly and squarely in the face,
and then, with the unerring intuition of her sex, to make up her
mind about them firmly, at once and for ever. That's one of the
many glorious advantages of being born a woman. You don't need to
learn in order to know. You know instinctively. And yet our girls
want to go to Girton, and train themselves up to be senior wranglers!

Elma Clifford, however, had NOT been to Girton, so, as she stumbled
into her place, she snatched one hurried look at Cyril Wiring's
face, and knew at a glance he was a landscape painter.

Now, this was clever of her, even in a woman, for Cyril Waring,
as he fondly imagined, was travelling that line that day disguised
as a stock-broker. In other words, there was none of the brown
velveteen affectation about his easy get-up. He was an artist,
to be sure, but he hadn't assiduously and obtrusively dressed his
character. Instead of cutting his beard to a Vandyke point, or