The Train

The boat-train was due to leave in ten minutes, and the platform at
Victoria Station (how changed since then!) showed that scene of
discreet and haughty excitement which it was wont to exhibit about
nine o'clock every evening in those days. The weather was wild. It had
been wet all day, and the rain came smashing down, driven by the great
gusts of a genuine westerly gale. Consequently there were fewer
passengers than usual, and those people who by choice or compulsion
had resolved to front the terrors of the Channel passage had a
preoccupied look as they hurried importantly to and fro amid piles of
luggage and groups of loungers on the wind-swept platform beneath the
flickering gas-lamps. But the porters, and the friends engaged in the
ceremony of seeing-off, and the loungers, and the bookstall
clerks--these individuals were not preoccupied by thoughts of intimate
inconveniences before midnight. As for me, I was quite alone with my
thoughts. At least, I began by being alone.

As I was registering a particularly heavy and overfed portmanteau to
Paris, a young woman put her head close to mine at the window of the
baggage-office.

"Mr. Foster? I thought it was. My cab set down immediately after
yours, and I have been trying to catch your eye on the platform. Of
course it was no go!"

The speech was thrown at me in a light, airy tone from a tiny, pert
mouth which glistened red behind a muslin veil.

"Miss Deschamps!" I exclaimed.

"Glad you remember my name. As handsome and supercilious as ever, I
observe. I haven't seen you since that night at Sullivan's reception.
Why didn't you call on me one Sunday? You know I asked you to."