Ah, no. Four sous. You make a mistake. Here, take it. It’s a franc I want.” He leapt onto the step of the train and threw the money onto her lap. Trembling with terror she screwed herself tight, tight, and put out an icy hand and took the money — stowed it away in her hand. “That’s all you’re going to get,” she said. For a minute or two she felt his sharp eyes pricking her all over, while he nodded slowly, pulling down his mouth: “Ve-ry well. Trrrès bien.” He shrugged his shoulders and disappeared into the dark. Oh, the relief! How simply terrible that had been! As she stood up to feel if the dress-basket was firm she caught sight of herself in the mirror, quite white, with big round eyes. She untied her “motor veil” and unbuttoned her green cape. “But it’s all over now,” she said to the mirror face, feeling in some way that it was more frightened than she.

People began to assemble on the platform. They stood together in little groups talking; a strange light from the station lamps painted their faces almost green. A little boy in red clattered up with a huge tea wagon and leaned against it, whistling and flicking his boots with a serviette. A woman in a black alpaca apron pushed a barrow with pillows for hire. Dreamy and vacant she looked — like a woman wheeling a perambulator — up and down, up and down — with a sleeping baby inside it. Wreaths of white smoke floated up from somewhere and hung below the roof like misty vines. “How strange it all is,” thought the little governess, “and the middle of the night, too.” She looked out from her safe corner, frightened no longer but proud that she had not given that franc. “I can look after myself — of course I can. The great thing is not to—” Suddenly from the corridor there came a stamping of feet and men’s voices, high and broken with snatches of loud laughter. They were coming her way. The little governess shrank into her corner as four young men in bowler hats passed, staring through the door and window. One of them, bursting with the joke, pointed to the notice Dames Seules and the four bent down the better to see the one little girl in the corner. Oh dear, they were in the carriage next door. She heard them tramping about, and then a sudden hush followed by a tall thin fellow with a tiny black moustache who flung her door open. “If Mademoiselle cares to come in with us,” he said, in French. She saw the others crowding behind him, peeping under his arm and over his shoulder, and she sat very straight and still. “If Mademoiselle will do us the honour,” mocked the tall man. One of them could be quiet no longer; his laughter went off in a loud crack. “Mademoiselle is serious,” persisted the young man, bowing and grimacing.