"All this! My standing, on a hot summer day, in the infernal din of some great city; and--and I seem to recall it vividly--after a fashion-- the blazing sun, the stifling odor of the pavements; I seem to remember that very hackman over there sponging the nose of his horse--even that pushcart piled up with peaches! Smith! What is this maddeningly elusive memory that haunts me--haunts me with the peculiar idea that it has all occurred before?... Do you know what I mean?"
"I've just admitted to you that everybody has that sort of fidget occasionally, and there's no reason to stand on your hindlegs about it. Come on or we'll miss our train."
But Beekman Brown remained stock still, his youthful and attractive features puckered in a futile effort to seize the evanescent memories that came swarming--gnatlike memories that teased and distracted.
"It's as if the entire circumstances were strangely familiar," he said; "as though everything that you and I do and say had once before been done and said by us under precisely similar conditions--somewhere--sometime."
"We'll miss that boat at the foot of Forty-second Street," cut in Smith impatiently. "And if we miss the boat we lose our train."
Brown gazed skyward.
"I never felt this feeling so strongly in all my life," he muttered; "it's--it's astonishing. Why, Smith, I knew you were going to say that."
"Say what?" demanded Smith.
"That we would miss the boat and the train. Isn't it funny?"
"Oh, very. I'll say it again sometime if it amuses you; but, meanwhile, as we're going to that week-end at the Carringtons we'd better get into a taxi and hustle for the foot of West Forty-second Street. Is there anything very funny in that?"