"No," said Max. "I've never seen her." And then, the power of the storm and the night, and their strange, dreamlike intimacy, made him add: "I love a woman whom I may never see again."
"And I," said the girl, "love a man I haven't seen since I was a child. Let's wish each other happiness."
"I wish you happiness," echoed Max.
"And I you. I shall often think of you, even if we never meet after to-morrow. But I hope we shall! I believe we shall." She shut her eyes suddenly, and lay still for so long that Max was afraid she might have fainted again.
"Are you all right?" he asked anxiously, bending toward her from his low seat on the suitcase.
She opened her eyes with a slight start, as if she had waked, half dazed, from some unfinished dream.
"Oh, yes," she said. "I was making a picture, in a way I have. I was wondering what would happen to us, in our different paths, and trying to see. One of my aunts says it is 'Celtic' to do that. I saw you in a great waste-place, like a desert. And then—I was there, too. We were together—all alone. Perhaps, although I didn't know it, I'd really fallen asleep."
"Perhaps," agreed Max, and a vague thrill ran through him. He, too, had dreamed of desert as he lay in the lower berth, and she, overhead, had dreamed a desert dream, each unknown to the other. "Try to go to sleep again."
She closed her eyes, and presently he thought that she slept. Once or twice she waked with the heave and jolt of a great wave, always to find her watchdog at hand.
But at last, when with the dawn the storm lulled, Max noiselessly switched off the light and went out.