She rested her head on one slender curved hand and closed her eyes. After a while she opened them with a weary smile. "I'll try to think--after you are gone.... What time does your train leave?" He glanced at his watch and rose; and she sprang up, too: "_Have_ I kept you too long?" "No; I can make it. We'll have to walk rather fast----" "I'd rather you left me here." "Would you? Then--good-bye----" "Good-bye.... Will you come up again?" "I'll try." "Shall we write?" "Will you?" "Yes. I have so much to say, now that you are going. I am glad you came. I am glad I told you everything. Please believe that my heart is enlisted in your new enterprise; that I pray for your success and welfare and happiness. Will you always remember that?" "Yes, dear." "Then--I mustn't keep you a moment longer. Good-bye." "Good-bye." They stood a moment, neither stirring; then he put his arms around her; she touched his shoulder once more, lightly with her cheek--a second's contact; then he kissed her clasped hands and was gone. CHAPTER XI Quarren arrived in town about twilight. Taxis were no longer for him nor he for them. Suit-case and walking-stick in hand, he started up Lexington Avenue still excited and exhilarated from his leave-taking with Strelsa. An almost imperceptible fragrance seemed to accompany him, freshening the air around him in the shabby streets of Ascalon; the heat-cursed city grew cooler, sweeter for her memory. Through the avenue's lamp-lit dusk passed the pale ghosts of Gath and the phantoms of the Philistines, and he thought their shadowy forms moved less wearily; and that strange faces looked less wanly at him as they grew out of the night--"clothed in scarlet and ornaments of gold"--and dissolved again into darkness. Still thrilled, almost buoyant, he walked on, passing the high-piled masonry of the branch Post-Office and the Central Palace on his left. Against high stars the twin Power-House chimneys stood outlined in steel; on the right endless blocks of brown-stone dwellings stretched northward, some already converted into shops where print-sellers, dealers in old books, and here and there antiquaries, had constructed show-windows. Firemen lounged outside the Eighth Battalion quarters; here and there a grocer's or wine-seller's windows remained illuminated where those who were neither well-to-do nor very poor passed to and fro with little packages which seemed a burden under the sultry skies. At last, ahead, the pseudo-oriental towers of a synagogue varied the flat skyline, and a moment later he could see the New Thought Laundry, the Tonsorial Drawing Rooms, the Undertaker's discreetly illuminated windows, and finally the bay-window of his own recent Real-Estate office, now transmogrified into the Dankmere Galleries of Old Masters, Fayre and Quarren, proprietors.