To read these artless effusions had been like looking into a crystal globe. Whatever came, Glynn could not complain that she had deceived him. During his benefactor’s dangerous illness, when it was essential for Glynn to remain where he was, and he could only cable his anxiety and sympathy, his heart had become more awakened to Posey’s claim upon him, and he had felt for her loyal tenderness. When the summons from Mr. Winstanley arrived that was to bring him once more in actual touch with her, he had set out to obey it, believing that he was at last effectually cured of old weakness, and panoplied to begin the new life.
And he had hardly set foot in France before he found himself seated side by side with Helen Carstairs in a railway train, flying southward, with nothing to disturb their intercourse during a long day and evening, and actually bound for the same goal!
Simultaneously, Glynn and Helen rose to the occasion, put behind them the temptation to revert to the fond chapter lived in their young lives, and took up again the sort of intercourse that had so pleased and refreshed her at the beginning of their acquaintance. It was like one of their old talks at the house of Helen’s friend who had introduced them to each other, and fostered their intimacy; a woman who had the cleverness to find interesting people in the whirlpool of business and pleasure and money-spending that calls itself New York society, and the courage to draw them out of it to herself.
Glynn felt that he would long have cause to remember that February day. The new fast train justified all that had been claimed for it in speed and comfort. It tore down the Rhone valley as the mistral tears, it left behind Avignon, city of Popes, and other spots of classic interest, as if it had been a "Flyer" between Chicago and New York. The light carriages rocked and swayed, stones from the road-bed rose up like a fusillade of small-arms, striking the bottom of the train; one dared not leave one’s seat for the dining-car for fear of falling; people who had not exchanged a word previously began, by common consent, to talk all together, and all their talk was of the speed of trains they had known and heard about. Miss Bleecker went yellow in her nervous anxiety, declaring she had no use for a train in which one could not brew a cup of tea for fear of setting things on fire. Mlle. Eulalie wept under her veil, and accepted brandy offered her from Miss Bleecker’s flask. The two solemn travellers who filled the other seats, and now joined in general animated talk, turned out to be one a French railway engineer, to whose utterances all listened humbly, the other an Italian musical genius, _en route_ for Monte Carlo. In the confusion of tongues and exclamations, the little string of toy carriages bounced and flew onward, until suddenly the air brakes were put on, and with a long protracted jolting, they came to a full stop!