Wilson laughed and turned a bantering eye upon his companion. "You must be getting interested, Adams! Is it a case of love at first sight?"
"No, you know I 'm not given to that sort of thing. But I don't read much on the cars, on account of my eyes, and while you 've been reading I 've spent the time looking at the passengers. And I found that girl and her roses by far the most pleasing items in the car."
"But she is n't beautiful," Wilson objected. "Her face is not pretty, and she 's inclined to be raw-boned."
"Yes, I 'll admit her features are irregular, and there 's fault to be found with each one. But that does n't matter. No woman with that live, creamy skin, that clear red in her cheeks, and that intelligent expression, could be any less than handsome. And she fairly glows with health and vitality. She has made me just curious enough about her vocation to want to know what it is, and if she stays on the train long enough to make an opening possible I intend to try to find out."
"Well," said Wilson, yawning, "you 're fortunate to be able to get up so much interest in your fellow-passengers. It is n't once in a dozen journeys that I find anybody on a railroad train who does n't strike me as being an entirely superfluous person."
"Oh, well," responded Adams good-naturedly, "you must remember that you are ten years older than I am, and that you are married and settled down, while I 'm not."
"It would be better for you if you were."
"Yes, I know you are always preaching at me the advantages of double blessedness. But I 'm not going to marry until I can't help it. When the girl comes along who can make me forget everything in the world but herself, I 'll marry her, if she 'll have me."
"Which she probably won't, as things generally turn out in this world," the other rejoined, smiling.
In the meantime Dr. Black was dipping here and there into the pages of her book, which had proved to be Mallock's "Human Document," more interested in its speculations concerning human nature and human nature's twin problems of life and love than in its slender thread of story. Gradually her interludes of meditation grew longer and more frequent, until the book closed in her lap and she looked dreamily out of the window, her thoughts busy with herself, her past, and her future.