A gentleman was coming from the distant end of the train. He too was hastening, but in the opposite direction. Both were intent on their own affairs, the platform was crowded, and ere they knew it, each was in the other's arms. Both recoiled, and stood to recover breath and apologise. Both looked. Both started in surprise.
"Gilbert Roe!" It was the lady who was the first to speak.
"Maida----?" responded the gentleman, and then he looked apologetic. He might be taking a liberty, he thought, and looked about to see if there was a husband to resent so familiar a use of his wife's name. "Are you travelling alone?" he asked, after a minute's silence, during which the lady's eyes had been so intently busy with him that she forgot to speak.
"You look older," she said at last. "Of course you must, after ten years' absence; but you are only improved--broad-chested and prosperous-looking;" and she wrung his hand in an intensity of welcome. "Where are you travelling to? What a strange place to meet in! Were you coming to----" but she did not finish her sentence. It occurred to her that it was her friend's turn to say something now.
"I am on my way to Clam Beach," he answered. "I shall put in a few days there, and then try some of the other places along the coast. Have been at several already. Not much account, any of them; but this is the season for being away. Nothing astir in Chicago at this time of year."
"Clam Beach? I've come from there. You'll find it pleasant. The house is full; but of course they can put up a single gentleman."
"You are there? Come, that's nice! I declare I'm in luck at last. My trip has been real lonesome, so far. I have been so long West that I have lost sight of my old friends, and can't scare up one, now I want 'em."
"You don't deserve to, if you serve them all as you did me. How many years is it since you wrote last, do you think? It's eight."
"Eight years? Ah, well, but that is different," he answered, with a laugh. "Who is with you at Clam Beach?"
"Who would be? The teachers at our college are mostly home with their friends. I'm an orphan, as you know, and I don't make very free with strangers; so I come to the shore, like other folks who have no friends to visit;" and she heaved a little sigh, but not a painful one. If life had been rather empty for her, that was forgotten now; "over," I daresay she would have said just then, if her feelings had fallen into words, for her eyes were on his face, her lips were parted, and her countenance was alight, more brightly than when the sunset clouds had lit it up a while ago. This was a rosier, warmer light, shining from within. It transfigured her for the moment, casting back the gathering years with their encrusting vapours, and disclosed her again as the enthusiastic maiden from whom the young man had parted ten years before, but purified and brightened by the struggles, and the victories, and the wisdom painfully acquired--for the moment, that is: there are no tabernacles or abiding-places on our mounts of transfiguration, and their glories are evanescent.