Desire had forgotten Mary."

"Did you?" said John. "Why man, the woman doesn't live who would
forget! And Miss Davis filled the bill to the last item--even the name
'Mary'."

"Oh what a pal was M-Mary!" croaked Yorick obligingly.

"The bird, too!" said John. "Everyone doing his little best to sustain
the illusion--even, if I am any judge, the lady herself."

But Benis Spence had never wasted time upon the lady herself. And he
did not begin now. With a face which had suddenly become years younger
he was searching frantically in his desk for the transcontinental
time-table.

CHAPTER XXXVI

The train crawled.

Although it was a fast express whose speed might well provoke the
admiration of travellers, in one traveller it provoked nothing save
grim endurance. Beside the consuming impatience of Benis Hamilton
Spence, its best effort was a little thing. When it slowed, he
fidgeted, when it stopped he fumed. He wanted to get out and push it.

Five days--four--three--two--a day and a half--the vastness of the
spaces over which it must carry him grew endless as his mind
continually tried to span them. He felt a distinct grievance that any
country should be so wide.

"Making good time!" said a genial person, travelling in the tobacco
trade. The professor eyed him with suspicion, as a man deranged by
optimism.

The train crawled.

Spence removed his eyes from the passing landscape and tried to forget
how slowly it was passing. He saw himself at the end of his journey. He
saw Desire. He saw a grudging moment, or second perhaps, devoted to
explanation. And then--How happy they were going to be! (If the train
would only forget to stop at stations it might get somewhere.) How
wonderful it would be to feel the empty world grow full again! To raise
one's eyes, just casually, and to see--Desire. To speak, in just one's
ordinary voice, and to know she heard. To stretch out one's hand and
feel that she was there. (What were they doing now? Putting on more
cars? Outrageous!) He would even write that book presently, when he got
around to it. (When one felt sure one could write.) But first they
would go away, just he and she, east of the sun and west of the moon.
They would sit together somewhere, as they used to sit on the
sun-warmed grass at Friendly Bay, and say nothing at all.... How
nearly they had missed it ... but it would be all right now. Love,
whom they had both denied, had both given and forgiven. It would be a