I didn't understand.
The man had thrown himself deliberately under the train. I was sure of it.
Was that something to cheer?
I finally made it to where the Regional Director was waiting for me—nearly an hour late.
It was at a hotel overlooking the Bay, and the sight was thrilling enough to put the unpleasant accident I had seen out of my mind for a moment. There was nothing so beautiful in all the world, I thought, as the Bay of Naples at sunset. It was not only my own opinion; I had seen it described many times in the travel folders I had pored over, while my wife indulgently looked over my shoulder, back in those remote days of marriage. "La prima vista del mundo," the folders had called it—the most beautiful sight of the world. They had said: "See Naples, and die."
I hadn't known, of course, that Marianna would die first....
But that was all behind me. After Marianna's death, a lot of things had happened, all in a short time, and some of them very bad. But good or bad, I had laid down a law for myself: I would not dwell on them. I had started on a new life, and I was going to put the past in a locked compartment in my mind. I had to!
I was no longer an ordinary civilian, scraping together his Blue Heaven premiums for the sake of a roof over his head, budgeting his food policies, carrying on his humdrum little job. I was a servant of the human race and a member of the last surviving group of gentleman-adventurers in all the world: I was an Insurance Claims Adjuster for the Company!
All the same, I couldn't quite forget some of the bad things that had happened, as I walked into the hotel dining room to meet the Regional Director.