A whistle blew, the train gave a premonitory jerk. Someone shouted. Miss Silver looked up and saw the door beside her wrenched open. The train gave a second jerk. A tall girl in grey came stumbling up the step into the carriage. A third and heavier jerk threw her against Miss Silver, who was at her best in an emergency. The girl was steadied. The door, which had swung loose, was caught and slammed. Lisle Jerningham found herself being pressed into a corner seat by someone who looked like a retired governess, while a voice strongly reminiscent of the schoolroom informed her that it was extremely dangerous to endeavour to enter a moving train – “and quite against the company’s regulations^”. The voice came from a long way off, from the other side of that gulf which lay between her and every living soul. On that other side there had once been a schoolroom and a voice like that. “Don’t bang the door when you come into a room, Lisle. Sit up, my dear – don’t slump in your chair like that. Oh, my dear Lisle, do please attend when I speak.” All these things – long ago and far away – on the safe other side of the gulf-

“Not at all safe,” said Miss Silver in earnest admonition.

Lisle stared at her. She said, “No.” And then, “It doesn’t matter, does it?” She saw Miss Silver quite plainly and distinctly, a little old-fashioned governessy woman sitting up prim and straight in the opposite corner, with frumpy clothes and the sort of hat that nobody had worn for years. With the least possible movement she could have touched her, and yet Miss Silver, like her voice, seemed a long way off. She said in a flat, exhausted voice, “It doesn’t matter,” and leaned back into her corner.

Miss Silver made no reply.