The Lion's Mouse

								

stopped.
"Oh, do help me!" she said.
She was young and very beautiful. He couldn't stare quite as coldly as
he ought.
"What can I do for you?" was the question he asked.
He had hardly opened his mouth before she flashed into the stateroom and
shut the door.
"There's a man.... I'm afraid!"
Though she was young and girlish, and spoke impulsively, there was
something oddly regal about her. Princesses and girl-queens ought to be
of her type; tall and very slim, with gracious, sloping shoulders and a
long throat, the chin slightly lifted: pale, with great appealing violet
eyes under haughty brows, and quantities of yellow-brown hair dressed in
some sort of Madonna style.
"You needn't be afraid," he said. "Men aren't allowed to insult ladies
in trains."
"This man hasn't insulted me in an ordinary way. But I'm in dreadful
danger. American men are good to women, even strangers. You can save my
life, if you will--or more than my life. But there's only one way." Her
words came fast, on panting breaths, as though she had been running. The
girl had stood at first, her hand on the door-knob, but losing her
balance with a jerk of the train, she let herself fall into the seat.
There she sat with her head thrown wearily back, her eyes appealing to
the eyes that looked down at her.
A queer fancy ran through the man's brain. He imagined that a woman
being tried for her life might look at the judge with just that
expression. "What do you mean?" asked Sands.
He had resisted the jerk of the train, and was still on his feet.
Instead of answering his question, the girl begged him to sit down.
"I can't think properly while it seems as if you were waiting to turn me
out," she said.
Sands sat down.
"I hardly know how to tell you what I mean. I hardly dare," the voice
went on, while he wondered. "It's a tremendous thing to ask. I can't
explain ... and if I hesitate it will be too late. I don't know your
name, or your character, except what I judge from your face. The way to
save me is to keep me in this stateroom with the door shut, as far as
Chicago."
"Good heavens! That's...." Sands was going to end his sentence with
"absolutely impossible!" But he stopped in the midst. Her eyes made him
stop. It was as if he were pronouncing a death sentence. He was silent
for a few seconds.
"I'd have to say ... no, I could not say you were my wife, because
everyone knows I've not got a wife. I'll say you are my cousin: say
you've come late. I want you to have this stateroom, and I'll take
another ... or a section. I--I could do that."
"Will you?" she breathed.
"Yes. I will."
He said this almost sullenly. He was thinking: "Pretty smart new dodge!
Neat way to get a stateroom all the way from Albuquerque to Chicago."
"I'll go out now and fix things up with the conductor," he promised. "We
must settle on a story. You came on board at Albuquerque just now?"