“Which is it? Mad, dumb, or a monk? I will find out. Well, it’s his own fault; he shouldn’t be so aggravating. I’m going to speak to him. I’ve made up my mind.”
In the interval between decision and action the train in a sudden brief access of nervous energy got itself through a station, and paused a furlong down the line exhausted by the effort.
The stranger had put down his Spectator and was gazing gloomily out at the fog.
Nina drew a deep breath, and said—at least she nearly said: “What a dreadful fog!”
But she stopped. That seemed a dull beginning. If she said that he would think she was commonplace, and she had that sustaining inward consciousness, mercifully vouchsafed even to the dullest of us, of being really rather nice, and not commonplace at all. But what should she say? If she said anything about the colour of the fog and Turner or Whistler, it might be telling, but it would be of the shop shoppy. If she began about books—the Spectator suggested this—she would stand as a prig confessed. If she spoke of politics she would be an ignorant impostor soon exposed. If But Nina took out her watch and resolved: “When the little
