But the lady was silent. She seemed not to hear. She was busy with some burrs on her gown. Her gaze lingered fondly upon her new sparkling diamond.
“Still silent,” he murmured, “still wrapped in your own thoughts. Why that disturbed expression, why no response? You frown; alas, what does this portend?” and Alonzo, the Guru, momentarily diverted from contemplation of Himself, clasped his hands, cast his eyes upward and bent as if he might kneel.
“It isn’t anything,” indifferently.
“Alas, and alas!” ejaculated her escort. “Not anything you say; yet we who walk the Path are taught that everything Objective is the outcome of something which is Subjective, and therefore nothing is something and ‘not anything’ is everything to me, when it disharmonizes YOU. Tell me, fair one, what and why?”
“O, well, if you must know,” and Miss Sheets sniffed, “I was just wondering if I could ever tie up to these dreadful, grassy smells of the country. One gets so used to City odors, you know. And Chicago has more of ’em, especially about the Yards, and better mixed than in any city in the world. When you’re in Chicago you know what’s a-coming”—and the city-bred girl held up her dainty “mouchoir” to ward off the scent of new mown hay.
A wave of perplexity, of doubt over-swept the solemn countenance of the Mystic.
“Then you would tell me—”
“Yes, that I don’t like the odors, and I don’t like this dead-and-alive stillness. Why, anybody who comes from the Yards, and is used to the roar and crash and squealing, gets nervous prostration in a cemetery like this.”
Alonzo contemplated her, wonderingly; then, as if dismissing the whole thing, he said in a tone that hinted of impetuosity, “Let us not talk of Chicago, nor the Yards. Let us forget the smelly things and the dead ones. Let us only think of each other, Miss Sheets,” and he drew closer to her. “Miss Sheets, Imogene, my own, my very own, tell me, tell me now that you feel a subtle something drawing you to ME!”