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"ON THE RESORT TRAIN"
                    Elixabeth F. Corbett
   One summer, about five years ago, my family were staying
 at a small summer resort on a branch line. I joined them
 every Saturday and returned to town on Monday morning, after
 the usual fashion of the middle-class American father.
   There were several people who always took the same train
Saturday noon that I did. Most of them were ordinary sub-
stantial business men. There was one woman.
   It was not only her undeniable beauty that aroused my in-
terest in her; she had the face of one who had passed through
some ordeal that has left uneffaceable scars. She was a brave
woman, though and she held her head high. It was a fine
head, and her hair was black as night. She always w~ore an
odd little hat, I remember; it was black, and had two white
wings set on it like the wings of Mercury's cap.
  One hot August day I got to the train before her. Presently,
however, she entered the stuffy little coach, and sat down just
ahead of me. She put her suit-case in the rack, took off her
travelling-coat and hung it up, and, producing a book from her
hand-bag, he began to read.
  I do not know whether the heat affected her, or whether
something discouraging had happened. At any rate, her head
dropped on her hand, and she sat, her elbow propped or the
windowsill, motionless.
  The train filled up and began to move. There was only one
place left, and that was beside the woman with the Mercury
cap. So when a single man got on at the first station outside
the city it was quite natural that he should stop beside her.
  He was a strikingly handsome man, thin and dark; his face
was charming but bore unmistakeable signs of long con-
tinued dissipation. Just now he looked rather weary. If it had
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