“It was curious, though,” I went on, “that that name, Gavrilo Prinzip, should have hammered itself in on my brain. I recall it now as about the only thing I could think of. I didn’t know what it meant, and I was far from supposing it the touchstone of human destinies that it afterward proved to be; but in some unreasoning way it held me. It was like the meaningless catch of a tune with which you can’t go on, till all at once you see it finishes in—” “In a trumpet-call. Yes, I know. You had to follow it. So had I. I don’t think there’s much more than that to be said.” The blue-gray streak was again on the starboard side, but comfortingly far astern. Though we were still within her range, we were getting the benefit of distance. At the same time some one called our attention to a blotch of black smoke, far down on the eastern horizon. A destroyer was coming to our aid. I went back to the point we had partially forsaken. “How long did you expect me to wait that afternoon?” She looked down at the deck, answering with a perceptible infusion of the bitter in her tone. “I didn’t fix a time. I wasn’t sitting with my watch in my hand.” “But I was.” “Evidently.” “Why didn’t you come down?” “I came down as soon as I could.” “What kept you?” She raised her eyes for a fleeting glance—lowering them again. At the same time her voice sank, too, so that in the fury of sound about us she was no more than audible. “The thing you told me.” “And that kept you—in what way?” “In the way of making everything—different.” “How much does that mean—different?” “It means a good deal.” “Can’t you tell me exactly?” “I can’t tell you exactly; but it was something like this.” She fixed her eyes on me steadily. “When they first opened the Subway in New York I came up out of a station one winter afternoon just as the lights were lit, and instead of going to the right, as I should have done, I turned to the left. When I had walked about fifteen minutes I was dazed. Though I was in a part of New York I knew perfectly well, I couldn’t recognize anything. It was all a confusion of lights. I couldn’t tell which of the streets ran north and south, or which were east and west, or what the buildings were that I’d been used to seeing all my life. In the end some one took me into a drug-store and made me sit down till I had time to reorientate myself.” “But you did it in the end?” “That time—yes.” “And this time? The time we’re talking about?” Whir-r-r! Z-z-z! P-ff! Bang! Whir-r-r! Z-z-z! P-ff! Bang! From the port side there came something like a feeble cheer—a chorus of rough male voices and high female screams, timid and yet glad.