count up with a horrible satisfaction--ninety-one--ninety-two--ninety-
three--NINETY FOUR! by gosh! and the cinders are filtering into your
berth, and even the porter is wandering restlessly up and down the
aisle like a black soul in purgatory and a white duck coat, then the
thing to do is to don those mercifully few garments which the laxity
of sleeping-car etiquette permits, slip out between the green curtains
and fare forth in search of draughts, liquid and atmospheric.

At midnight Emma McChesney, inured as she was to sleepers and all
their horrors, found her lower eight unbearable. With the bravery of
desperation she groped about for her cinder-strewn belongings, donned
slippers and kimono, waited until the tortured porter's footsteps had
squeaked their way to the far end of the car, then sped up the dim
aisle toward the back platform. She wrenched open the door, felt the
rush of air, drew in a long, grateful, smoke-steam-dust laden lungful
of it, felt the breath of it on spine and chest, sneezed, realized
that she would be the victim of a summer cold next day, and, knowing,
cared not.

"Great, ain't it?" said a voice in the darkness. (Nay, reader. A
woman's voice.)

Emma McChesney was of the non-screaming type. But something inside of
her suspended action for the fraction of a second. She peered into the
darkness.

"'J' get scared?" inquired the voice. Its owner lurched forward from
the corner in which she had been crouching, into the half-light cast
by the vestibule night-globe.