"I've got a trunk full of fairly good clothes and about a hundred dollars. But I haven't got any play--or any art--or any trade even. Of course, I'll go." Then she hastily added, "I'll not be a drag on you. I pay my own way." "But you mustn't be suspicious in your independence," he warned her. "You mustn't forget that I'm older than you and more experienced and that it's far easier for a man to get money than for a woman." "To get it without lowering himself?" "Ah!" he exclaimed, looking strangely at her. "You mean, without bowing to some boss? Without selling his soul? I had no idea you were so much of a woman when I met you that day." "I wasn't--then," replied she. "And I didn't know where I'd got till we began to talk this evening." "And you're very young!" "Oh, but I've been going to a school where they make you learn fast." "Indeed I do need you." He touched his glass to hers. "On to Broadway!" he cried. "Broadway!" echoed she, radiant. "Together--eh?" She nodded. But as she drank the toast a tear splashed into her glass. She was remembering how some mysterious instinct had restrained her from going with John Redmond, though it seemed the only sane thing to do. What if she had disobeyed that instinct! And then--through her mind in swift ghostly march--past trailed the persons and events of the days just gone--just gone, yet seeming as far away as a former life in another world. Redmond and Gulick--Etta--yes, Etta, too--all past and gone--forever gone---- "What are you thinking about?" She shook her head and the spectral procession vanished into the glooms of memory's vistas. "Thinking?--of yesterday. I don't understand myself--how I shake off and forget what's past. Nothing seems real to me but the future." "Not even the present?" said he with a smile. "Not even the present," she answered with grave candor. "Nothing seems to touch me--the real me. It's like--like looking out of the window of the train at the landscape running by. I'm a traveler passing through. I wonder if it'll always be that way. I wonder if I'll ever arrive where I'll feel that I belong." "I think so--and soon." But she did not respond to his confident smile. "I--I hope so," she said with sad, wistful sweetness. "Then again--aren't there some people who don't belong anywhere--aren't allowed to settle down and be happy, but have to keep going--on and on--until----" "Until they pass out into the dark," he finished for her. "Yes." He looked at her in a wondering uneasy way. "You do suggest that kind," said he. "But," smilingly, to hide his earnestness, "I'll try to detain you." "Please do," she said. "I don't want to go on--alone." He dropped into silence, puzzled and in a way awed by the mystery enveloping her--a mystery of aloofness and stoniness, of complete separation from the contact of the world--the mystery that incloses all whose real life is lived deep within themselves. CHAPTER XXIV