“I feel cities, nations, over there, crowding down the horizon.”
“Not loneliness?”
“No, no; I feel so many human things in it—things that are gone and things that are coming.”
“As though you were watching history pass by,” he said gravely.
She looked up quickly and nodded.
“Funny, that’s not how it affects me,” he said. “It makes me feel little—insignificant. It crushes me at times, and at others, even in crushing me, it compensates by the feeling of the futility of what we strive for.”
She drew her brows together in a contemplative frown.
“I don’t believe I could feel that,” she said, in wonder. “I feel freer and lighter, as though there were more air to breathe, as though I could run for hours, as though there were no fences and no gates to stop you from doing anything you wanted to do.”
He laughed, feeling a communicative thrill.
“Sure you won’t feel too lonely?”