y could have found enough in the conjectural
fortunes and characters of their fellow-passengers to occupy them. This
phase of their youth had lasted long, and the world was still full of
novelty and interest for them; but it required all the charm of the
dining-car now to lay the anxieties that beset them. It was so potent
for the moment, however, that they could take an objective view at their
sitting cozily down there together, as if they had only themselves in
the world. They wondered what the children were doing, the children
who possessed them so intensely when present, and now, by a fantastic
operation of absence, seemed almost non-existents. They tried to
be homesick for them, but failed; they recognized with comfortable
self-abhorrence that this was terrible, but owned a fascination in being
alone; at the same time, they could not imagine how people felt who
never had any children. They contrasted the luxury of dining that way,
with every advantage except a band of music, and the old way of rushing
out to snatch a fearful joy at the lunch-counters of the Worcesier and
Springfield and New Haven stations. They had not gone often to New York
since their wedding journey, but they had gone often enough to have
noted the change from the lunch-counter to the lunch-basket brought in
the train, from which you could subsist with more ease and dignity, but
seemed destined to a superabundance of pickles, whatever you ordered.

They thought well of themselves now that they could be both critical and
tolerant of flavors not very sharply distinguished from one another in
their dinner, and they lingered over their coffee and watched the autumn
landscape through the windows.

"Not quite so loud a pattern of calico this year," he said, with
patronizing forbearance toward the painted woodlands whirling by.
"Do you see how the foreground next the train rushes from us and
the background keeps ahead of us, while the middle distance seems
stationary? I don't think I ever noticed that effect before. There ought
to be something literary in it: retreating past and advancing future and
deceitfully permanent present--something like that?"

His wife brushed some crumbs from her lap before rising. "Yes. You
mustn't waste any of these ideas now."

"Oh no; it would be money out of Fulkerson's pocket."

VII.

They went to a quiet hotel far down-town, and took a small apartment
which they thought they could easily afford for the day