Chapter II

GIMCRACK ICE

She was thinking of it two hours later--having
gained her coaxing point--seated
in the well-nigh empty parlor
car of the north-bound express, that green-aisled
Pullman being the first car behind
the cab and plodding engine which,
regardless of schedule, crept along slowly
and warily to-day upon ice-shod rails.

But as she caressed the honorable thumb--the
little girlish member which would
press the button while all the world wondered--and
peered out through a window
fairly frosted, lo! again she saw a landscape
dimly in flames--blood-red--as
viewed through the spectroscope of her
own raging thoughts.

For ice was within the car, as without.

There--there, seated almost on a
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v?