Finding no answer to this question, she still kept a keen watch for that long-eared Chinaman who had snatched the jeweled dagger from her hand and later had walked the cables of the Sky Ride.
“It is like a Chinaman to have three blades to his knife where only one is needed,” she assured herself. “But why must one have a dagger in a temple? I’ll ask that interesting white man who sold me the book.”
Indeed she would, and many other questions besides. “There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough hew them though we may.” The men we meet and pass, never to meet again, the ones who because of a passing word become part of our very lives, all their names are written in a book, and the name of that book is FATE.
A long, low bus, looking for all the world like a mammoth greyhound, stopped at Jeanne’s very feet. Because on the long seat filled with smiling people there was room for one more, Jeanne paid her fare and took her place with the rest.
Where was she going? She did not know nor care. Some time perhaps she would take this exhibition seriously. Time enough for that. The whole summer was before her, fifteen glorious weeks. For the moment she would wander at will.
Gliding along in the bus she lost all sense of time until, with a start, she found herself at the far end of that all but endless pageant.
“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed. “Why did I come all this way? Florence is waiting. She will never forgive me!”
Climbing aboard a second bus, she went gliding back the way she had come.
“Ah, my dear!” she cried as she sighted her good friend seated in a camp chair, watching the fading lights. “How can you forgive me?”
“That is not so hard,” the big girl drawled. “I’ve been sitting here half asleep, watching the throngs pass by.