She looked very young and childish as she lay there, with the faint shadows of fatigue beneath her closed eyes--there was something appealing about her very helplessness.
Presently the rug slipped a little, and he saw her hand groping vaguely for it.

Quietly he tiptoed across the compartment and drew it more closely about her.
"Thank you--so much," she murmured drowsily, and the man looking down at her caught his breath sharply betwixt his teeth.

Then, with an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, he stepped back and resumed his seat.
The express sped on through the night, the little twin globes of light high up in the carriage ceiling jumping and flickering as it swung along the metals.
Down the track it flew like a living thing, a red glow marking its passage as it cleft the darkness, its freight of human souls contentedly sleeping, or smoking, or reading, as the fancy took them.

And half a mile ahead on the permanent way, Death stood watching--watching and waiting where, by some hideous accident of fate, a faulty coupling-rod had snapped asunder in the process of shunting, leaving a solitary coal-truck to slide slowly back into the shadows of the night, unseen, the while its fellows were safely drawn on to a aiding..