The man wore the dress of a peasant, but around him was a leather belt—old, worn, battered—but a recognizable belt of no Asiatic pattern, and showing a heavy buckle made in twisted initials.
The woman's eye had caught the sunlight on this buckle before she saw that the heavily bearded face under the hood was white. She pressed forward to look at it.
"Where did you get that belt?" she cried, turning for the interpreter to urge her question.
The man had caught her voice, her words. He threw back his hood and looked at her, with a strange blank look, as of one listening to something far away.
"John!" she cried. "John! My Brother!"
He lifted a groping hand to his head, made a confused noise that ended in almost a shout of "Nellie!" reeled and fell backward.
* * * * *
When one loses his mind, as it were, for thirty years, and finds it again; when one wakes up; comes to life; recognizes oneself an American citizen twenty-five years old——
No. This is what I find it so hard to realize. I am not twenty-five; I am fifty-five.
* * * * *