What was he to do now?
He glanced round him restlessly.

The swaying noisy train and the compartment packed with stolid faces jarred on his overburdened nerves.
Why were those women in the next compartment laughing like hyenas?
What was there in life to laugh over at any time?
It was a thing to impose silence on all by its desolation, its unescapable doom.

His eye was caught by an advertisement above the rack opposite him--an advertisement which depicted a smiling grotesque face, and advised him to buy the comic journal it represented in order to dissipate melancholy and gloom.
Fools--fools all! While he was thus looking around him his eyes encountered a curious glance from the man in the opposite corner seat, who had been in the compartment when he entered the train at Charleswood.

The man dropped his gaze at once, but there was something in the quality of the look which put Charles on his guard.

Charles did not turn his head again, but, leaning back in his seat, kept the other under view from seemingly closed eyes.