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 hand gets to the quarter I will speak. Whatever I say, I’ll say something.”

And when the big hand did get to the quarter Nina did speak.

“Why shouldn’t we talk?” she said.

He looked at her; and he seemed to be struggling silently with some emotion too deep for words.

“It’s so silly to sit here like mutes,” Nina went on hurriedly—a little frightened, now she had begun, but more than a little determined not to be frightened. “If we were at a dance we shouldn’t know any more of each other than we do now—and you’d have to talk then. Why shouldn’t we now?”

Then the stranger spoke, and at the first sentence Nina understood exactly what reason had decided the stranger that they should not talk. Yet now they did. If this were a work of fiction I shouldn’t dare to pretend that the train took more than two hours to get to Mill Vale. But in a plain record of fact one must speak the truth. The train took exactly two hours and fifty minutes to cover the eleven miles between London and Mill Vale. After that first question and reply Nina and the stranger talked the whole way.