The Wonder

station the woman and h

t a book to read among such distracting circumstances as those of a railway journey, but I was eagerly planning

of the station. I caught sight of the baby she was carrying, and turned back to my

nce of the ray, but the ray itself by which the truth comes to us; and if this

assage conveyed no meaning to my mind, and as I attempted to re-read

ked, my mind already searching for the reason of this hallucination, I saw that the lower part of the face was that of an infant. My eyes wandered from the book, and my gaze fluttered along the four persons seated opposite to me, till it rested on the reality of my vision.

ild, but what differentiated it was the impression one received of calm intelligence. The head was complet

en conscious that they had been stiffened. My gaze was released, pushed aside a

atches of skin on the jaw; one inferred that he wore that beard only to save the trouble of shaving. He was sitting next to me, the middle passenger of the three on my side of the carriage, and he

pport against his body; he held his clumsily folded paper close to his eye

gan to creep up the paper in front of him. When they reached the top, he hesitated a moment, making a survey under cover, then he droppe

nd looked at me with a silly, vacuous smile. I looked away hurr

ses of his gold-mounted spectacles. He, too, had been reading a newspaper-the Evening Standard-until the child's gaze claimed his attention, and he, too, was h

am," he said, addressing the