“Mr. Whacker,” said she, after a few moments’ silence, “you must really excuse me. I cannot conceive what made me so silly. What is he to me? But do you know, sometimes the strangest ideas come into my head, and I often wonder whether other people have the same. Sometimes I will visit some place for the first time, and suddenly it will seem to me that I have been there before, although I know all the time that it is not so. And again I will be listening to some one relating an incident just happened, and it will seem such an old story to me; and it will seem as though I had heard just the same story ages and ages ago. Do you know, I sometimes think that the ancients—however, it is all nonsense, of course. But oh, I would not feel again as I did just now for worlds! Do you know, when he passed me, I felt a sort of subtle, aerial force, a kind of magnetic influence, as it is called, drawing me towards him, and so strongly, that nothing but the firm grasp I had on your arm saved me from rushing up to him and taking him by the hand. And then, when I passed him, without speaking to him, suddenly there came over me the strangest feeling. Will you think me crazy if I tell you what it was?” “By no means,” said I, much interested. “Well,—will you believe me?—a sudden pang of remorse.” “Remorse!” “Yes; I cannot think of a better word. It seemed to me as though I had known him ages ago, in some other world, such as the Pythagoreans imagined, and that I, bright and young and happy, meeting him again, I, though I saw he was unhappy, cruelly passed him by! Oh, Mr. Whacker, I do pity him so!” Her lower lip trembled, and her soft brown eyes glistened with rising tears. For a while neither of us spoke,—she, perhaps, afraid to trust her voice, I respecting her emotion by silence. “Yes,” said I, at length, “it is an old story. ‘What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?’ We cannot help, though we would, feeling the sorrows of others. But, Miss Lucy, aren’t you letting your imagination—no, your tender-heartedness—run away with your judgment? Here is a great, strapping, fine-looking fellow, whom you have seen passing along the street a few times, with a rather serious expression of countenance, and you straightway jump to the conclusion that he is profoundly miserable, and even shed tears over his fate.” “Yes, it is all very silly, of course,” said she, smiling, and brushing away her tears. “And you must admit that you have not a particle of evidence, not a scintilla, as we lawyers say, that the Don is any more to be pitied than I, or any other person of your acquaintance.”