“What a wonderful picture!” she murmured half to herself, half aloud, and half not aloud and half not to herself.
“Through the whole of it,” de Vere went on, “there run railways, most of them from east to west, though a few run from west to east. The Pennsylvania system alone has twenty-one thousand miles of track.”
“Twenty-one thousand miles,” she repeated; already she felt her will strangely subordinate to his.
He was holding her hand firmly clasped in his and looking into her face.
“Dare I tell you,” he whispered, “how many employees it has?”
“Yes,” she gasped, unable to resist.
“A hundred and fourteen thousand,” he said.
There was silence. They were both thinking. Presently she spoke, timidly.
“Are there any cities there?”
“Cities!” he said enthusiastically, “ah, yes! let me try to give you a word-picture of them. Vast cities—with tall buildings, reaching to the very sky. Why, for instance, the new Woolworth Building in New York—”