“No one will know,” she said. “Quick! They’ll think we’re brother and sister!”
A big clock tolled the first stroke of twelve. He took her face in his hands so tempestuously as to startle and hurt, but she laughed.
“All aboard!”
“Go quick!” he cried.
The conductor was impatient. Boom! boom! the big clock finished out its twelve slow strokes.
“Many happy returns of the day,” he called after the moving train. She said nothing, but she waved until the darkness enveloped her.
XXIX
“STRAIGHT! STRAIGHT! STRAIGHT! STRAIGHT!”
“I ’M not a bit sorry I came,” she said aloud as she fumbled around the zigzag corners of two Pullmans until she reached her own drawing-room. And she was not; she was most unreasonably elated; she had, she knew not why, all the humming sensations of victory. It was unaccountable. She sat on her couch and tried to fathom the meaning of her snug contentedness. She retold the full day together, the “window-cracking,” the luncheon in state, the jogs about strange streets, the applauding crowd at the lecture, the garish Hungarian café, the confession and its almost painful reception, and the tumultuous parting. She ought to have been depressed, but she was throbbing with joy. “It was good, every minute of it,” she said.
Mechanically she undid the wrappings from Allen’s birthday gift, arranged the pillows and the light, and prepared to read. The outside of the book was the simple adjustable cover of a college note-book, but a gold-leafed title had been printed across the front:
Unclaimed Letters