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168 "You—you don't mind?" he cried, and sat down beside her again. The trunk seemed to have increased in size. At any rate there was room to spare at the end.

"Not—not in the least," she murmured.

He was silent for a long time. "Would you mind calling me Eric,—just once?" he said at last, wistfully. His voice was very low. "I—I'm rather homesick for the sound of my own name, uttered by one of my own people."

"Oh, you poor dear boy!"

"Say 'Eric,'" he pleaded.

"Eric," she half-whispered, suddenly shy.

He drew a long, deep breath, and again was silent for a long time. Both of them appeared to have completely forgotten her plight.

"We're both a long, long way from home, Jane," he said.

"Yes, Eric."

"Odd that we should be sitting here like this, on a trunk, on the sidewalk,—in a fog."

"The 'two orphans,'" she said, with feeble attempt at sprightliness.

"People passing by within a few yards of us and yet we—we're quite invisible." There was a thrill in his voice.

"Almost as if we were in London, Eric,—lovely black old London."

Footsteps went by in the fog in front of them, automobiles slid by behind them, tooting their unheard horns.