"It does get next to one, some way, doesn't it?" he said.
Rather to her thoughts she replied aloud: "To think of all those people living there, almost in the grasp of the hand. Think of them moving, scurrying about among those lights. It makes one feel it would be so easy to do things for them, move them about at one's will—from here. And yet——" She was silent a moment, thinking. "And yet even to be able to raise one's head above it all, to see—and be seen! Well——"
"That's what I mean to do." He spoke almost as if she were not there, and his voice, which was as though disembodied, and jarring a bit with its resonance, brought her back to the present.
"It's a hard thing to do and I've come to think it takes sometimes a lifetime, but—it can be done." He had turned and she could feel his warm breath in her ear. There was a note of assurance in his words and, as she watched, a change came over the scene before her and it all seemed like a huge graying blanket punched full of tiny, bright flat holes. Something had receded, escaped back into the darkness behind it all.
She made no reply.
"I wanted to tell you and it's about as good a time as any. You may be needing some help. It's not all so easy down there. And—well, if you need any help—make the way any easier for you—why, don't hesitate to call on me."
"That's good of you," she replied, and wondered at the lack of warmth in her own voice. "Perhaps I shall." But she could not help feeling that in some way she had seen what she had seen—alone.
They sat a little longer in silence, and then Mary Louise straightened in her seat and called to him briskly:
"We must be going. Why, it must be eight o'clock. What have I been thinking of?"
"That's what I'd like to know," he laughed.