“Yes; but how hard it is to realise that we are on the earth now. Sometimes I have a sense of it, though, when the moon breaks from one flying cloud to another. Then it seems as if I were a passenger on some vast, shapeless ship sailing through the air. What,” he asked, with no relevancy that I could perceive, “was the strangest feeling _you_ ever had?” I remembered asking girls such questions when I was young, and their not apparently thinking it at all odd. “I don’t know,” she returned thoughtfully. “There was one time when I was little, and it had sleeted, and the sun came out just before it set, and seemed to set all the woods on fire. I thought the world was burning up.” “It must have been very weird,” said Kendricks; and I thought, “Oh, good heavens! Has he got to talking of weird things?” “It’s strange,” he added, “how we all have that belief when we are children that the world is going to burn up! I don’t suppose any child escapes it. Do you remember that poem of Thompson’s—the _City of Dreadful Night_ man—where he describes the end of the world?” “No, I never read it.” “Well, merely, he says when the conflagration began the little flames looked like crocuses breaking through the sod. If it ever happened I fancy it would be quite as simple as that. But perhaps you don’t like gloomy poetry?” “Yes, yes, I do. It’s the only kind that I care about.” “Then you hate funny poetry?” “I think it’s disgusting. Papa is always cutting it out of the papers and wanting to send it to me, and we have the greatest _times_!” “I suppose,” said Kendricks, “it expresses some moods, though.” “Oh yes; it expresses some moods; and sometimes it makes me laugh in spite of myself, and ashamed of anything serious.” “That’s always the effect of a farce with me.” “But then I’m ashamed of being ashamed afterward,” said the girl. “I suppose you go to the theatre a great deal in New York.” “It’s a school of life,” said Kendricks. “I mean the audience.” “I would like to go to the opera once. I am going to make papa take me in the winter.” She laughed with a gay sense of power, and he said— “You seem to be great friends with your father.” “Yes, we’re always together. I always went everywhere with him; this is the first time I’ve been away without him. But I thought I’d come with Mrs. Deering and see what Saratoga was like; I had never been here.” “And is it like what you thought?” “No. The first week we didn’t do anything. Then we got acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. March, and I began to really see something. But I supposed it was all balls and gaiety.” “We must get up a few if you’re so fond of them,” Kendricks playfully suggested. “Oh, I don’t know as I am. I never went much at home. Papa didn’t care to have me.”