Jim gave her no thrill; for he looked gaunt and angular in his skimpy, ready-made suit, too short in legs and sleeves, and too thin for the season. Yet, as they walked along, Jim grew upon her. He strode on with immense strides, made slow to accommodate her shorter steps, and embarrassing her by his entire absence of effort to keep step. For all that, he lifted his face to the stars, and he kept silence, save for certain fragments of his thoughts, in dropping which he assumed that she, like himself, was filled with the grandeur of the sparkling sky, its vast moon, plowing like an astronomical liner through the cloudlets of a wool-pack. He pointed out the great open spaces in the Milky Way, wondering at their emptiness, and at the fact that no telescope can find stars in them.
They stopped and looked. Jim laid his hard hands on the shoulders of her white fur collarette.
“What’s the use of political meetings,” said Jim, “when you and I can stand here and think our way out, even beyond the limits of our Universe?”
“A wonderful journey,” said she, not quite understanding his mood, but very respectful to it.
“And together,” said Jim. “I’d like to go on a long, long journey with you to-night, Jennie, to make up for the years since we went anywhere together.”
“And we shouldn’t have come together to-night,” said Jennie, getting back to earth, “if I hadn’t exercised my leap-year privilege.”
She slipped her arm in his, and they went on in a rather intimate way.
“I’m not to blame, Jennie,” said he. “You know that at any time I’d have given anything—anything—”
“And even now,” said Jennie, taking advantage of his depleted stock of words, “while we roam beyond the Milky Way, we aren’t getting any votes for me for county superintendent.”
Jim said nothing. He was quite, quite reestablished on the earth.