A hundred times he had repeated this to-day. There was loose in him a power of feeling which made the days of his straight unemotional reporting look like a feeble affectation. Coming into the harbor of New York less than two weeks before, he had learned to accept the emptiness of life. But since then, curiously enough, a new order of content had filled him. Was it necessary to be emptied of the old entirely in order to be filled with the new?
Pasadena was behind; the Limited was running down grade into Los Angeles; then momentary halts with Mexican faces turned to the car windows—Chinese faces, a tangle of freights—finally a slow down, and on one side, groups of up-turned faces, expectant, some strained to an intense kind of pain to catch the eyes of their own.... The bags had to be put out. There were people in front of him; he was shut off from windows.
“Sit tight, Dicky——”
A white limp-brimmed straw hat pulled down over her ears like a bonnet! A taller Pidge—no, she was standing on her toes to look over the shoulders of the crowd. Now she saw him; her eyes blinked, her shoulders lifting quickly. He moved slowly, positively not crushing anybody. Her hands were raised—one higher than the other, the fingers apart. They stayed so, until he pressed against them. She was taller. Their faces were so close—both shaded for an instant under the wide brim of her hat. He had been looking into her eyes; then they were too close to look into. It seemed neither had anything to do about it. He hardly dared remember.
Some one near by knew a happiness that shrieked. They walked away from the many voices. Then he realized that he was carrying his two hand bags.
“Where’s the parcel room?” he asked.
“I’ll show you the way. The station is very old and dingy.”
He checked them. They walked to the other end of the yards where the big palms called.
“How’s your father?”
“I think—he’s better. You heard about the baby—Fanny Gallup’s baby?”