"Oh, but I've been going to a school where they make you learn fast."
"Indeed I do need you." He touched his glass to hers. "On to
Broadway!" he cried.
"Broadway!" echoed she, radiant.
"Together—eh?"
She nodded. But as she drank the toast a tear splashed into her glass. She was remembering how some mysterious instinct had restrained her from going with John Redmond, though it seemed the only sane thing to do. What if she had disobeyed that instinct! And then—through her mind in swift ghostly march—past trailed the persons and events of the days just gone—just gone, yet seeming as far away as a former life in another world. Redmond and Gulick—Etta—yes, Etta, too—all past and gone—forever gone——
"What are you thinking about?"
She shook her head and the spectral procession vanished into the glooms of memory's vistas. "Thinking?—of yesterday. I don't understand myself—how I shake off and forget what's past. Nothing seems real to me but the future."
"Not even the present?" said he with a smile.
"Not even the present," she answered with grave candor. "Nothing seems to touch me—the real me. It's like—like looking out of the window of the train at the landscape running by. I'm a traveler passing through. I wonder if it'll always be that way. I wonder if I'll ever arrive where I'll feel that I belong."
"I think so—and soon."