“What?”
“Oh! They're there still. It's we that have come hither.”
“Of course. I forgot. But still— You know, there was an avenue of little trees along this quay with seats, and she was sitting looking out upon the lake.... I hadn't seen her for ten years.”
He looks about him still a little perplexed. “Now we are here,” he says, “it seems as though that meeting and the talk we had must have been a dream.”
He falls musing.
Presently he says: “I knew her at once. I saw her in profile. But, you know, I didn't speak to her directly. I walked past her seat and on for a little way, trying to control myself.... Then I turned back and sat down beside her, very quietly. She looked up at me. Everything came back—everything. For a moment or so I felt I was going to cry....”
That seems to give him a sort of satisfaction even in the reminiscence.
“We talked for a time just like casual acquaintances—about the view and the weather, and things like that.”
He muses again.
“In Utopia everything would have been different,” I say.