clear of the relatives. We have scarcely got their names
straight yet, and besides, that sort of thing is so uncivi-
lized and wrong."

"So uncivilized?" queried Mrs. Munt, fearing that
she was losing the point of some brilliant remark.

"Oh, I used an affected word. I only meant would
you please only talk the thing over with Helen."

"Only with Helen."

"Because --" But it was no moment to expound the
personal nature of love. Even Margaret shrank from it,
and contented herself with stroking her good aunt's
hand, and with meditating, half sensibly and half po-
etically, on the journey that was about to begin from
King's Cross.

Like many others who have lived long in a great
capital, she had strong feelings about the various rail-
way termini. They are our gates to the glorious and the
unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure
and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. In Paddington
all Cornwall is latent and the remoter west; down the
inclines of Liverpool Street lie fenlands and the illimit-
able Broads; Scotland is through the pylons of Euston;
Wessex behind the poised chaos of Waterloo. Italians
realize this, as is natural; those of them who are so un
fortunate as to serve as waiters in Berlin call the Anhalt
Bahnhof the Stazione d'Italia, because by it they must
return to their homes. And he is a chilly Londoner who
does not endow his stations with some personality, and
extend to them, however shyly, the emotions of fear
and love.

To Margaret -- I hope that it will not set the reader
against her -- the station of King's Cross had always sug-
gested Infinity. Its very situation -- withdrawn a little
behind the facile splendours of St. Pancras -- implied a
comment on the materialism of life. Those two great
arches, colourless, indifferent, shouldering between
them an unlovely clock, were fit portals for some eternal
adventure, whose issue might be prosperous, but would
certainly not be expressed in the ordinary language of

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