For a long hour thereafter we rather mused together than conversed. Constraint slipped from us, as those we had best loved came back to us, warm and near and living in our thoughts of them. No taint of false sentiment, of sorrow willfully indulged, marred these memories. Trying to be happy we had failed; now, strangely, we came near to joy. "We haven't lost them!" exclaimed Susan. "Not any part of them; we never can." "They haven't lost us, then?" "No"--she pondered it--"they haven't lost us." "You mean it, Susan--literally? You believe they still live--_out there_?" "And you?" "I don't know." "Poor Ambo," murmured Susan; then, with a quick, dancing gleam: "But as Jimmy'd say, dear, you can just take it from _me_!" She spoke of him as if present beside her. A silence fell between us and deepened. The small, bullet-headed man had just paid his extravagant bill, distributed his largesse, and was about to depart. He was being helped into a sumptuous overcoat, with a deep collar of what I took to be genuine Russian sables. There was nothing in his officiously tended leave-taking to stir my interest; my eyes rested on him idly for a moment, that was all. The head waiter, two under-waiters, and a solemn little buttons followed him out to the stair-head, with every expression of gratitude and esteem. Passing from sight, he passed from my thoughts, leaving with me only a vague physical repulsion that barely outlasted his departure. "Do you know what I think Phil has done?" Susan was asking. "Phil?" The name had startled me back to attention. "I believe he's made himself one of them--the peasants, I mean--in some remote, dirty, half-starved Russian village." "Why? That's an odd fancy, dear. And it isn't much like him. Phil's too clear-headed, or stiff-headed, for such mysticism." "How little you really know him, then," she replied. "He's been steering since birth, I feel, toward some great final renunciation. I believe he's made it, now. You'll see, Ambo. Some day we'll hear of a new prophet, away there in the East--where all our living dreams come from! You'll see!" "'In Vishnu-land what Avatar?'" I quoted, smiling sadly enough; and Susan's smile wistfully echoed mine, even while she raised a warning finger at me. "Oh, you of little faith!" she said quite simply. X We had barely stepped out from the narrow doorway of the restaurant into a tenuous, moon-saturated mist, a low-lying diaphaneity that left the upper air-lanes openly clear, when the sirens were wailing again from every quarter of the city.... "They're coming early to-night!" I exclaimed. "Well, that ends all hope for a taxi home! We must find an _abri_." "Nonsense! We'll walk quietly back along the river. Unless"--she teased me--"you really _are_ afraid, Ambo?" I tucked her arm firmly into mine. "So you won't stumble, _Mlle. la Réformée_!" "But it is a nuisance to be lame!" she protested: "I do envy you your two good legs, _M. le Capitaine_."