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 and when she spoke her voice was almost affable.

"Perhaps," she said, "you'll be good enough to tell me in what way you consider that you have bettered the situation by throwing yourself into a snowdrift?"

"Why—er—you were left here quite alone. Miss Burnett, and it seemed to me that perhaps I might be of service—"

"Really? And it didn't occur to you that the most serviceable thing you could have done would have been to pull the bell-cord?"

Wade flushed, opened his mouth and closed it again.

"I suppose that even on this road the trains are supplied with bell-cords?" she went on in half-smiling irony.

"I think—yes, they are."

"And it didn't occur to you, when you saw that I was being left behind, to pull the cord and stop the train?"

Wade dropped his gaze, swallowed hard and temporized.