“So they’ve broken away from each other, just as we did?”
“Something like that. I don’t expect they accomplished it as cleanly. Sebastian’s methods are inclined to be messy or theatrical. In fact, it was he who managed to put me off my ideas; he overdid them so disgracefully. And I doubt if he ever took a firm and logical grasp of them.”
“Then why—oh, Stuart, why didn’t you leave him alone?”
Stuart knitted his brows. “It was a good theory,” he said, in much the same tone as the Mad Hatter once pleaded: “It was the best butter!”
“But you’ve doubled back on it now.”
“Exactly. So somebody’s got to prove it, if I don’t. Hang it! one can’t leave theories lying loose about the world.”
“I’m thinking of Letty,” said Peter softly, flooded by pity for the girl now groping helplessly after her mate, not understanding why she had been deprived of him. She, Peter, had understood at the time—it hadn’t been so hard for her. “Oh, poor Letty ... poor little lovers....”
Stuart interrupted, rather uneasily: “She’ll marry a bank clerk, and be grateful to me for the rest of her life. Really and truly, Peter, I was trying to help them. They’d have been so miserable together. People who are blind, must be helped.”
—The train drew up with a jerk at a station. Bewildered by this abrupt cessation to the speed at which they had been hurled through streaming space, Stuart scrambled to his feet. Grey fretting ghost-figures hurried past their window. He watched them, himself dreamily calm; it was inconceivable that anything from the outer world could break through the enchantment which held their compartment aloof and inviolate from all intrusion. Nevertheless, an intrepid hand suddenly clutched at the door-handle, turned it sharply, called to someone behind: “Plenty of room in here!”—And, before any preventive measures could be taken, two large women collapsed on the seat opposite Stuart and Peter.... And the train rushed on.